
i 



^* S f$ ^ 



THE 



PROCEEDINGS 



CELEBRATION BY THE PILGRIM SOCIETY 

AT PLYMOUTH, 

December 21, 1870, 

OF THE 

CtDO l^unDreD auD fiftietl) ^nmber^ari^ 

OF THE 

LANDING OF THE PILGRIMS. 



CAMBRIDGE: 

PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON. 
1871. 



'01 

" Wb have come to this Rock, to record here our homaj^e tor our Pilgrim 
Fathers; our sympathy in their sufferings; our gratitude for their labors; our 
admiration of their virtues; our veneration for tl}eir piety; and our attaeliment to 
those principles of civil and religious liberty, for wliicli tliey encountered the dangers 
of the ocean, the storms of heaven, the violence ol savages, disease, exile, and fam- 
ine, to enjoy and establish." — Webstek. 



^b*^ 






%/35 



77 



y 



INTRODUCTION. 



" I ^HIS Volume has been prepared, and is now published, 
in obedience to a vote of the Trustees of the Pilgrim 
Society passed at a meeting held in the office of the Register 
of Deeds at Plymouth, on the evening of Friday, December 
30, 1870. 

At that meeting it was voted that the Vice-President 
of the Society be requested to prepare and publish the 
proceedings of the Celebration of the Two Hundred and 
Fiftieth Anniversary of the Landing of the Pilgrims ; 
and that the Secretary, William S. Danforth, Esq., be 
directed to communicate to Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, 
of Boston, the thanks of the Trustees for the able, eloquent, 
and instructive oration delivered by him on that occasion, 
and to request a copy for publication. 

Plymouth, January, 1871. 



OFFICERS AND TRUSTEES 



THE PILGRIM SOCIETY. 



Presitjent. 
Hon. EDWARD S. TOBEY . . 



ex officio Trustee. 



Fice=^r£0il(Ent. 
Hon. WILLIAM T. DAVIS ex officio Trustee. 



WILLIAM S. DANFORTH, Esq. 



ex officio Trustee. 



ISAAC N. STODDARD, Esq. . 



ex officio Trustee. 



^Trustees. 



Hon. CHARLES G. DAVIS. 

„ E. C. SHERMAN. 

„ NATHANIEL B. SHURTLEFF. 

„ GEORGE S. BOUTWELL. 
TIMOTHY GORDON, M.D. 
THOMAS LORING, Esq. 
SAMUEL H. DOTEN, Esq. 
CHARLES 0. CHURCHILL, Esq. 
GEORGE G. DYER, Esq. 



WILLIAM H. WHITMAN, Esq. 
WILLIAM THOMAS, Esq. 
ABRAHAM JACKSON, Esq. 
JAMES W. SEVER, Esq. 
WILLIAM SAVERY, Esq. 
GEORGE P. HAYWARD, Esq. 
BEN.JAMIN HATHAWAY, Esq. 
RICHARD WARREN, Esq. 
ELLIS AMES, Esq., 



Committee of Arrangements. 



William T. Davis, Chairman. 
E. C. Sherman. 
William H. Whitman. 
CiiAULES G. Davis. 
William S. Danforth. 
John Morissey. 



Alhert Mason. 
Sajiuel H. Doten. 
Nathaniel Brown. 
Richard Warren, New York. 
Thomas Russell, Boston. 
Georoe p. IIaywaud, Boston. 



PRELIMINARY PROCJEEDINGS. 



A T the annual meeting of tlic Pilgrim Society, held at 
Pilgrim Hall, in Plymouth, at three o'clock, p.m , on 
Monday, May 30, 1870, it was voted that the Vice-President, 
together with Isaac N. Stoddard, Esq., William H. 
Whitman, Esq., and Dr. Timothy Gordon, be a Com- 
mittee to consider the expediency of celebrating the Two 
Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Landing of the 
Pilgrims, occurring on the 21st of December following, 
and report at an adjourned meeting. ^ 

At the adjourned meeting held at the same place on the 
14tli of June, at three o'clock, p.m., a report of the Committee 
recommending the Celebration was adopted, and a vote was 
passed requesting the Trustees to make the necessary arrange- 
ments. 

At a meeting of the Trustees held at the Plymouth 
National Bank on the evening of July 5th, at eight o'clock, 
it was unanimously voted, on motion of Richard Warren, 
Esq., that a Committee — consisting of the President, Vice- 
President, and Messrs. Gordon, Warren, and Ames — wait 
upon Hon. Eobert C. Winthrop, of Boston, and invite 
him to deliver an Oration before the Society on the 21st of 
December.^ 

At a meeting of the Trustees held at the same place on the 
evening of the 7th of September, neither the President nor 



8 



PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 



Vice-President being present, Richard Warren, Esq., was 
called to the chair. The Committee appointed to wait on 
Mr. WiNTHROP reported his acceptance of the invitation ; 
and it was then voted that a " Committee of five, of which 
the Vice-President shall be Chairman, be appointed by the 
Chairman of the meeting, which shall be a Committee of 
Arrangements to make preparations for the, Celebration, with 
full power to invite guests, appoint committees, and do all 
things needful and fitting for the occasion." 
The Committee as appointed consisted of — 



William T. Davis, Chairman. 
E. G. Sherman. 



WiLLLVM H. WlIITSLVN. 

Charles G. Davis. 



William S. Danforth. 

At a meeting of the Committee of Arrangements held at 
the house of the Chairman on the evening of September 
27th, it was voted to enlarge the Committee by the addition 
to their number of — 



John Morissey. 
Albert Mason, 
s^uviuel h. doten. 



Nathaniel Brown. 
Richard Warren, New York. 
Thomas Russell, Boston. 



George P. Hayward, Boston. 

It was also voted to invite Albert Mason, Esq., to act 
as Chief Marshal on the day of the Celebration ; and Wil- 
liam S. Danforth, Esq., was appointed Treasin-er. 

^ It was further voted that a Finance Committee be 
appointed ; and the following gentlemen were selected to 
act on that Committee : — 



Geo. F. Weston, Chairman. 
E. C. Turner. 
Charles H. Rowland. 
T. D. Shumway. 
John T. Hall. 
Henry Whiting, Jr. 



Charles C. Doten. 
Benjamin A. Hathaway. 
John H. Harlow. 
Charles O. Churchill. 
L. T. RoBBixs, Jr. 
Richard Warren, New York. 



George P. Hayward, Boston. 



PRELIMINARY PROCEEDINGS. 



A Committee of Reception was also appointed, consisting 



of the following gentlemen : — 

John Morissey, Chairman. 
Jacob H. Loud. 
Thomas Loring. 
Daniel E. Damon. 
James Bates. 
Isaac N. Stoddard. 
Jeremiah Farris. 
Elliott Russell. 

William R. 



Thomas B. Drew. 
William H. Nelson. 
William Hedge. 
George F. Andrews. 
Charles W. Spooner. 
George G. Dyer. 
Gideon Perkins. 
John J. Russell. 
Drew. 



It was further voted that the Committee of Arrangements 
act as a General Committee for the ball, with which it was 
proposed to close the festivities of the Celebration, and that 
a board of Honorary Managers be appointed, consisting of 
the followlno: srentlenien : — 



Richard Warren, New York. 
Thomas Russell, Boston. 
William G. Russell, Boston. 
James T. Hayward, Boston. 
B. W. Harris, Boston. 
James H. Harlow, Middleboro'. 



J. H. Mitchell, E. Bridgewater. 
William Savery, Carver. 
William L. Reed, Abington. 
George W. Wright, Duxbury. 
C. B. H. Fessenden, N. Bedford. 
Charles F. Swift, Yarmouth. 



The following gentlemen were selected as Floor Managers 
of the ball : — 



Henry G. Parker, Boston. 
Dwight Faulkner. 
Francis H. Russell. 
B. M. Watson, Jr. 
Benjamin O. Strong. 



William P. Stoddard. 
James D. Thurber. 
Henry W. Loring. 
Robert B. Churchill. 
Edward W. Russell, New York. 



Isaac Damon, Bridgewater. 

At subsequent meetings of the Committee of Arrange- 
ments, it was voted to have a public dinner in the new rail- 
way passenger station, the use of which the officers of the 
Old Colony and Newport Railway Company had kindly ten- 
dered to the Committee ; and a contract was concluded with 
Mr. L. E. Field, of Taunton, to furnish the dinner, and 



10 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

also the supper for the ball. The Standlsh Guards, of Ply- 
mouth, were invited to perform escort duty, and to be the 
guests of the Society at the dinner on the day of the Celebra- 
tion. Gilmore's Band, of Boston, and the Plymouth Brass 
Band were engaged for the occasion, and every step was 
taken on a liberal scale to insure a commemoration worthy 
of the day and creditable to the town. 

By a vote of the Committee, the following clergymen 
were invited to conduct the services in the church*: — 

Rev. R. H. Nkale, D.D., Boston. I Rev. J. P. Thompson, D. D.,New 
Rev.F. H. Hedge, D.D., Brook- York. 

line. Rev. T. E. St. John, Worcester. 

Rev. J. A. M. Chapman, Boston. | Rev. F. N. Knapp, Plymouth. 

Letters of invitation to be present at the Celebration as 
guests of the Society were sent to the following gentlemen : — 

His Excellency Ulysses S. Grant . . President of the United States. 
Hon. Schuyler Colfax . . . Vice-President of the United States. 

„ Hamilton Fish Secretary of State. 

„ J. C. B. Davis Assistant Secretary of State. 

„ George S. Boutwell Secretary of the Treasury. 

„ William A. Richardson . Assistant Secretary of the Treasury. 

„ Columbus Delano Secretary of the Interior. 

„ William W. Belknap Secretary of War. 

„ G. M. Robeson Secretary of the Navy. 

„ J. A. J. Cresswell Postmaster- General. 

„ Amos T. Akerman Attorney-Ge)ieral. 

„ Nathan Clifford . Associate Justice Supreme Court of U. S. 

Gen. William T. Sherman Washington. 

Maj.-Gen. O. O. Howard „ 

„ John M. Corse ,, 

Hon. Edward Thornton British Minister. 

„ J. W. Patterson United States Senate. 

„ Matt. H. C.\rpenter „ „ 

„ Hannibal Hamlin „ „ 

„ James W. Nye „ „ 

„ Charles Sumner „ „ 

„ Henry Wilson ,, „ 



PRELIMINARY PROCEEDINGS. 11 

Hon. James A. Garfield . . United States House of Representatives. 
„ William D. Kelly . . „ „ „ 

„ James Buffixton ... „ „ „ ^ 

„ B. F. BUTLEU .... „ „ „ 

„ Oakes Ames „ „ „ 

„ Genery Twichell . . „ „ „ 

„ Samuel Hooper ... „ „ „ 

„ Nathaniel P. Banks . . „ „ ,, 

„ George M. Brooks . . „ „ „ 

„ George F. Hoar ... „ „ „ 

„ Henry L. Dawes ... „ „ „ 

„ William B. Washburne „ „ „ 

„ Caleb Gushing . Washington. 

„ George Bancroft Berlin. 

„ J. L. Motley London. 

„ George P. Marsh Turin. 

Commodore James Alden Washington. 

Hon. Joshua L. Chamberlin ....... Oovemor of Maine. 

„ Onslow Stearns Governor of New Hampshire. 

„ John W. Steward Governor of Vermont. 

„ Seth Padelford . • Governor of Rhode Island. 

„ James E. English Governor of Connecticut. 

„ Charles S. Bradley . . Late Chief Justice of Rhode Island. 
„ Morton INLcMichael Philadelphia. 

Jay Cooke, Esq Philadelphia. 

Hon. Horace Greeley . . . Ex-Memher of Congress, New York. 
„ Joseph H. Choate . . . President N. E. Society of New York. 
,, William JNI. Evarts . New York, Ex- Attorney-General U. S. 

Richard Warren, Esq. . New York, Ex-President Pilgrim Society. 

George W. Curtis, Esq Neio York. 

William C. Bryant, Esq „ 

Rev. Henry W. Bellows, D.D „ 

President T. I). Wolsey Yale College. 

President Charles W. Eliot Harvard College. 

Rev. Henry Ward Beeciier, D.D Brooklyn, N. Y. 

Rev. Richard S. Storrs, Jr., D.D Brooklyn, N. Y. 

Samuel Copp Brewster, Esq Syracuse, N. Y. 

C. B. Doty, Esq Stetthenville, Ohio. 

Hon. T. Stekry Hunt . . . President N. E. Society in Montreal. 
„ George Partridge . . . President N. E. Society in St. Louis. 

Hon. George T. Davis .... Portland, Ex^Member of Congress. 



12 



PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 



His Excellency William Claflin . . . Goveimor of Massaclmsettt. 
Colonel A. B. Underwood . . . "j 

„ James L. Bates .... I Aids io the Governor of Massa- 
„ Edward N. Hallowell . t chuseits. 

„ Charles F. Walcott . . J 
His Honor Joseph Tucker . Lieutenant- Oovernor of Massachusetts. 

Hon. William L. Reed Of the Executive Council. 

Charles Adams, Jr. 
M. S. Underwood . 
R. G. Usher . . . 
William Winn . . 
H. G. Crowell . . 
Sylvajstder Johnson 
Peter Harvey . . 

Oliver Warner Secretary of the Commonwealth. 

Jacob H. Loud Treasurer and Receiver-General. 

Charles Endicott Auditor. 

Hon. Stephen N. Gifford .... Clerk of Mass. Senate. 

Maj.-Gen. James A. Cunningham . . . Adjutant-General of Mass. 

Hon. Reuben A. Chapman . Chief Justice Supreme Court of Mass. 

„ L. F. Brigham . . 

„ Charles Allen . . 

„ Horace H. Cooledge 

„ Harvey Jewell . . 

„ Charles F. Adams . 

„ Charles H. Warren 

„ John H. Clifford . 

„ Alexander H. Bullock 

Prof. Henry W. Longfellow 

„ James Russell Lowell 

William Everett, Esq. . 

Hon. George S. Hjllard 

„ Thomas Russell . . 

„ John G. Whittier . 

„ E. RocKWOOD Hoar 

„ Charles W. Upham 

„ John G. Palfrey 

„ George B. Loring . 

„ Walter S. Harriman 

„ Nathaniel B. Shurtleff 

,, George W. Wakuen 



Chief Justice Superior Court of Mass. 
Attorney-General of Massachusetts. 
. President of Massachusetts Senate. 
Speaker Mass. House of Bepresentatives . 
. Boston, Late Minister to England. 
Ex-President of the Pilgrim Society. 
New Bedford, Ex-Governor of Mass. 



Worcester 



Ex-Governor of Mass. 
Harvard College. 



United States Attorney. 

Collector of Boston. 

. . . Ameshury. 

Concord, Late Attoimey- General U. S. 

Salem, Ex-Me7iiber of Congress. 

Cambridge, Ex-Member of Congress. 

Salem. 

. Ex-Governor of New Hampshire. 

Mayor of Boston. 

Charlestown, President Bunker Hill 
Monument Association. 



PRELIMINARY PROCEEDINGS. 13 

Hon. George Marston New Bedford. 

„ William H. Wood Middleboro\ 

„ William S. Clark . Amherst, Pres. Mass. Agricultural College. 

„ Artemas Hale .... Bridgewater, Ex-Member of Congress. 

„ Benjamik Hobart . Abington, oldest living Graduate Brown 

University. 

William L. Garrison, Esq Boston. 

William H. Bullock, Esq „ 

Hammatt Billings, Esq. . Boston, Arcliitect of the National Monu- 
ment to the Pilgrims. 

Oliver W. Holmes, M.D Boston. 

Rev. Edward E. Hale „ 

Capt. R. A. Fengar United States Revenue Service. 

S. B. NoYES, Esq Canton. 

Rev. Edward N. Kirk Boston. 

„ J. M. Manning „ 

„ Edwards A. Park Andover. 

„ Edmund H. Sears Weston. 

„ Joseph Richardson . ; Hingham. 

The following Associations were also invited to send 
delegates to attend the Celebration and be the guests of the 
Pilgrim Society : — 

Massachusetts Historical Society Boston. 

American Antiquarian Society Worcester. 

New England Historic-Genealogical Society . . . Boston. 

Historical Society of Connecticut Neiv Haven. 

New York Historical Society Neiv York. 

Cape Cod Association 

New England Society Cincinnati. 

„ „ Neio York. 

„ „ Chicago. 

„ „ Montreal. 

„ „ Netc Orleans. 

„ „ St. Louis. 

„ „ San Francisco. 

„ „ Aurora, Nevada. 

The day of the Celebration was such as is rarely seen in 
winter. The ground was free from both snow and frost, the 
sky cloudless, and the air as mild as that of early November. 



14 



PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 



During the early hours of the morning the streets of 
Plymouth were enlivened by numerous arrivals from the 
neighboring towns ; and at ten o'clock a special express train 
of eleven cars arrived from Boston, bringing most of the 
invited guests and a large number of visitors. At eleven 
o'clock the regular train arrived with larger numbers, and all 
were warmly welcomed to the hospitalities of the town. To 
avoid the difficulty of discovering the invited guests at the sta- 
tion on the arrival of the trains, and extricating them from the 
crowd, the Committee of Reception had delegated two of 
their number to go to Boston, and return in the cars with the 
guests, and present them to their Chairman on their arrival. 
They were at once taken in carriages to the house of the 
Chairman of the Committee of Arrangerftents, who held a 
public reception, and from there escorted to the Court House, 
from whence they were to take carriages for the procession. 
On the arrival of the regular train at eleven o'clock, the 
members of the Pilgrim Society, and citizens intending to 
join the procession to the church where the services were to 
be held, met at Pilgrim Hall. At a quarter past eleven, the 
Chief Marshal Captain Albert Mason, with his aids 
Captains Charles C. Doten and James D. Thurber, and 
his assistants — 



Cajjt. JOSIAH C. FULLEK, 

„ Charles B. Stoddard, 
George F. Andrews, 
James M. Atwood, 
William Hedge, 
Charles H. Howland, 



Benjamin A. Hathaway, 
Joseph L. Weston, 
Chandler Holmes, 
Thomas D. Shumway, 
George II. Jackson, and 
John H. Harlow, 



with the exception of those detailed for duty at the- 
church, formed the procession ; which soon after moved in 
the following order through Court, North, Water, and 
Leyden Streets, to the Church of the First Parish : — 



PRELIMINARY PROCEEDINGS. 



15 



Escort. 

The Standish Guards, Captain Josiah R. Drew, 

Accompanied by the Plymouth Brass Band. 

Aid. Chief Marshal. Aid. 

The Hon. Edward S. Tobey, President of the Society. 

The Hon. William T. Davis, Vice-President of the Society 

The Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, the Orator of the Day, 

And the invited guests, as follows : — 



Hon. Henry Wilson. 

Charles F. Adams. 
Onslow Stearns. 
John H. Clifford. 
George S. Hillard. 
Charles S. Bradley. 
Nathaniel B. Shurtleff. 
Thomas Russell. 
George T. Davis. 
George W. Warren. 
Artemas Hale. 
Benjamin Hobart. 
Charles Endicott. 
Walter S. Harriman. 
Jacob H. Loud. 
Stephen N. Gifford. 
Emory Washburn, Delegate of 
Mass Hist. See 



Hon. Stephen Salisbury, Delegate of 
Amer. Antiquarian Soc. 
„ Marshul P. Wilder, Delegate of 

New Eng. Hist. Gen. Soc. 
„ T. Sterry Hunt. 
Rev. Frederick H. Hedge, D.D. 
„ Rollin H. Neale, D.D. 
„ Joseph P. Thoinpson, D.D. 
„ J. A. M. Chapman. 
„ T. E. St. John. 
„ Frederick N. Knapp. 
Gen. O. O. Howard. 
Mr. William Everett. 
„ Samuel B. Noyes. 
,, Hammatt Billings. 
Capt. R. A. Fengar. 
Col. A. B. Underwood. 
„ Charles F. Walcott. 



Committee of Arrangements and Committee of Reception. 

Gilmore's Band, of Boston. 

Officers and Trustees of the Pilgrim Society. 

Members of the Pilgrim Society. 

Other' Organizations, and Citizens. 

As the procession passed the Rock, a national salute 
was fired on board the United States Revenue Steamer 
" Mahoning," anchored in the harbor ; a courtesy for which 
the Committee were indebted to the Commander of the 
Cutter, Captain R. A. Fengar, who was one of the guests 
of the Society. 

The church had been opened for the admission of ladies 
to reserved seats at a quarter past eleven o'clock ; and on the 
arrival of the procession it was at once filled to its utmost 



16 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

capacity. Gilmore's Band was stationed in the gallery, 
together with a double quartette choir, composed of the fol- 
lowing singers : soprano, Mrs. Winslow B. Standish and 
Miss Olive Collingwood ; contralto, Mrs. E. B. Atwood 
and Miss Lena Rich ; tenor, Messrs. Joseph L. Brown 
and John H. Harlow ; basso, Messrs. Charles H. Rich- 
ardson and James M. Atwood. Seats and tables for 
members of the Press were arranged in the cross-aisle in 
front of the pulpit ; and the following journals were repre- 
sented : — 

Old Colony Memorial and Plymouth Rock . . . Plymouth. 

Old Colony Sentinel ,, 

Abington Standard Ahington. 

Hingham Journal Hingliam. 

North Bridgewater Gazette NoHli Bridgewater. 

Middleboro' Gazette Middleboro\ 

New Bedford Standard New Bedford. 

Weymouth Gazette Weymouth. 

Yarmouth Register Yarmouth Port. 

Daily Advertiser Boston. 

Boston Journal 

Evening Traveller 

Boston Herald 

Boston Post 

Evening Transcript 

Suffolk County Journal 

Commercial Bulletin 

Saturday Evening Gazette 

Free Press Northampton. 

Hartford Courant Hartford. 

Advance Chicago. 

Christian Union New York. 

Evening Post ,, 

Independent ,, 

Mexico Independent Mexico, N. Y. 

At a quarter past twelve the services commenced. 



1 



^culnces in tl)e Cl)urcl), 



I. 

VOLUNTARY. 

Prayer from " Moses in Egypt," by Gilmore's Band. 

II, 

ODE. 

Composed by Hon. John Davis, for flie Celebration in 1792 ; read 
by Rev. Rollin H. Neale, D.D., of Boston; and sung by the 
Choir to the tune of "America," with Orchestral Accompaniment. 

Sons of renowned sires, "• 
Join in harmonious choirs, 

Swell your loud songs ; 
Daughters of peerless dames, 
Come with your mild acclaims. 
Let their revered names 

Dwell on your tongues. 

From frowning Albion's seat 
See the famed band retreat, 

On ocean tost ; 
Blue tumbling billows roar, 
By keel scarce ploughed before. 
And bear them to this shore 

Fettered with frost. 

By yon wave-beaten rock 
See the illustrious flock 
Collected stand ; 
3 



18 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

To seek some sheltering grove 
Their faithful partners move, 
Dear pledges of their love 
In either hand. 

Not winter's sullen face, 
Not the fierce tawny race 

In arms arrayed. 
Not hunger, shook their faith ; 
Not sickness' baleful breath 
Nor Carver's early death 

Their souls dismayed. 

Watered by heavenly dew. 
The germ of Empire grew. 

Freedom its root ; 
From the cold northern pine, 
Far tow'rd the burning line, 
Spreads the luxuriant vine, 

Bending with fruit. 

Columbia, child of Heaven ! 
The best of blessings given 

Be thine to greet ; 
Hailing this votive day. 
Looking with fond survey 
Upon the weary way 

Of Pilgrim feet. 

Here trace the moss-grown stones 
Where rest their mould'ring bones. 

Again to rise ; 
And let thy sons be led 
To emulate the dead. 
While o'er their tombs they tread 

With moisten'd eyes. 



SERVICES IN THE CHURCH. 19 

III. 
READING 

Of the following Selections from the Scrij^tures, by Rev. Fredehic 
H. Hedge, D.D., of Brookline, Mass. 

Psalm CXXIV. 
TF it had not been the Lord who was on our side, now 
may Israel say ; 

2 If it had not been the Lord who was on our side, when 
men rose up against us : 

3 Then they had swallowed us up quick, when their wrath 
was kindled against us : 

4 Then the waters had overwhelmed us, the stream had 
gone over our soul : 

5 Then the proud waters had gone over our soul. 

6 Blessed be the Lord, who hath not given us as a prey 
to their teeth. 

7 Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the 
fowlers : the snare is broken, and we are escaped. 

8 Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven 
and earth. 

Genesis XII. 

1 Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of 
thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's 
house, unto a land that I will shew thee : 

2 And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will 
bless thee, and make thy name great ; and thou shalt be a 
blessing : 

3 And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him 
that curscth thee : and in thee shall all families of the earth 
be blessed. 

Hebrews XI. 

1 Now fiiith is the substance of things hoped for, the evi- 
dence of things not seen. 



20 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

2 For by it the elders obtained a good report. 

8 By faith Abraham, when he was called to sfo out into 
a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, 
obeyed ; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. 

9 By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a 
strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and 
Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise : 

10 For he looked for a city which hath foundations, 
whose builder and maker is God. 

12 Therefore sprang there even of one, and him as good 
as dead, so many as the stars of the sky in multitude, and as 
the sand which is by the sea shore innumerable. 

13 These all died in faith, not having received the prom- 
ises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of 
them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were 
strangers and pilgrims on the earth. 

14 For they that say such things declare plainly that they 
seek a country. 

15 And truly, if they had been mindful of that country, 
from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity 
to have returned. 

16 But now they desire a better country, that is, an 
heavenly : wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their 
God : for he hath prepared for them a city. 

39 And these all, having obtained a good report through 
faith, received not the promise : 

40 God having provided some better thing for us, that 
they without us should not be made perfect. 

Psalm CVII. 

1 O give tlianks unto the Lord, for he is good : for his 
mercy endureth for ever. 

2 Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom he hath 
redeemed from the hand of the enemy ; 



SERVICES IN THE CHURCH. 21 

3 And gathered them out of the lands, from the east, and 
from the west, from the north, and from the south. 

4 They wandered in the wilderness in a solitary way ; 
they found no city to dwell in. 

5 Hvuigry and thirsty, their soul fainted in them. 

6 Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and he 
delivered them out of their distresses. 

7 And he led them forth by the right way, that they might 
go to a city of habitation. 

8 Oh that men would praise the Lord for his goodness, 
and for his wonderful works to the children of men ! 

9 For he satisfieth the longing soul, and filleth the hungry 
soul with goodness. 

32 Let them exalt him also in the congregation of the 
people, and praise him in the assembly of the elders. 

33 He turneth rivers into a wilderness, and the water- 
springs into dry ground ; 

34 A fruitful land into barrenness, for the wickedness of 
them that dwell therein. 

35 He turneth the wilderness into a standing water, and 
dry ground into water-springs. 

36 And thei'e he maketh the hungry to dwell, that they 
may prepare a city for habitation ; 

37 And soyv the fields, and plant vineyards, which may 
yield fruits of increase. 

40 He poureth contempt upon princes, and causeth them 
to wander in the wilderness, where there is no way. 

41 Yet setteth he the poor on high from affliction, and 
maketh him families like a flock. 

42 The righteous shall see it, and rejoice : and all iniq- 
uity shall stop her mouth. 

43 Whoso is wise, and will observe these things, even 
they shall understand the loving-kindness of the Lord. 



22 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

Matthew YII. 

16 Ye shall know them by their fruits : do men gather 
grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? 

1 7 Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit ; but 
a corrupt tree, bringeth forth evil fruit. 

18 A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can 
a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. 

19 Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn 
down, and cast into the fire. 

20 Wherefore, by their fruits ye shall know them. 

21 Not every one that saith unto me. Lord, Lord, shall 
enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will 
of my Father which is in heaven. 

22 Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we 
not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out 
devils ? and in thy name done many wonderful works ? 

23 And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you : 
depart from me, ye that work iniquity. 

24 Therefore, whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, 
and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which 
built his house upon a rock : 

25 And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the 
winds blew, and beat upon that house ; and it fell not : for it 
was founded upon a rock. 

26 And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and 
doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which 
built his house upon the sand : 

27 And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the 
winds blew, and beat upon that house ; and it fell : and great^ 
was the fall of it. 



SERVICES IN THE CHURCH. 23 

IV. 

HYMN. 

Composed for the occasion by Plon. William T. Davis ; read by 
Rev. J. A. M. Chapman, of Boston ; and sung by the Choir, with 
Orchestral Accompaniment, to a tune composed for the occasion 
by C. A. White, of Boston.* 

To Thee, O God ! whose guiding hand 

Our Fathers led across the sea. 
And brought them to this barren shore. 

Where they might freely worship Thee ; 

To Thee, O God ! whose arm sustained 

Their footsteps in this desert land, 
Where sickness lurked and death assailed, 

And foes beset on every hand ; 

To Thee, O God ! we lift our eyes ; 

To Thee our grateful voices raise. 
And, kneeling at Thy gracious throne, 

Devoutly join in hymns of praise. 

Our Fathers' God ! incline Thine ear, 

And listen to our heartfelt prayer ; 
Surround us with Thy heavenly grace. 

And guard us with Thy constant care. 

Our Fathers' God ! in Thee we'll trust ; 

Sheltered by Thee from every harm, 
We'll follow where Thy hand shall guide, 

And lean on Thy sustaining arm. 



24 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 



V. 
ORATION. 

By Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, of Boston. 

HERE can be no true New England heart 
which does not throb to-day with something 



T 



of unwonted exultation. There can be no true 
American heart, I think, which has not found itself 
swelling with a more fervent gratitude to God, and 
a more profound veneration for the Pilgrim Fathers, 
as this morning's sun has risen above the hill-tops, 
in an almost midsummer glory, and ushered in, 
once more, with such transcendent splendor, our 
consecrated Jubilee. 

When we reflect on the influence which has 
flowed, and is still flowing, in ever fresh and cease- 
less streams, from yonder Rock, which two centuries 
and a half ago was struck for the first time by the 
foot of civilized. Christian man; when we reflect 
how mightily that influence has prevailed, and how 
widely it has pervaded the world, — inspiring and 
aiding the settlement of Massachusetts, and, through 
Massachusetts, of all New England, and, through 
New England, of so large a part of our whole wide- 
spread country, and thus, through the example of 
our country and its institutions, extending the prin- 
ciples of civil and religious freedom to the remotest 
regions of the earth, leaving no corner of Christen- 



ORATION. 25 

dom, or even of Heathendom, unvisited or unre- 
freshed, — we should be dead, indeed, to every 
emotion of gratitude to God or man, were we not 
to hail this Anniversary as one of the grandest in 
the calendar of the ages. 

We are here, my friends, to celebrate the Fifth 
Jubilee of what is now known emphatically, where- 
ever the history of New England, or the history of 
America, is read, as " The Landing." No other 
landing, temporary or permanent, upon our own or 
upon any other shore, can ever usurp its title, or ever 
supersede or weaken its hold upon the world's 
remembrance and regard. 

There have been other landings, I need hardly 
say, which have left a proud and shining mark on 
the historic page: Landings of discoverers; land- 
ings of conquerors; landings of kings or princes, 
called by right of restoration or revolution to take 
possession of time-honored thrones ; landings of 
organized Colonies, from large and well-appointed 
fleets, on conspicuous coasts, to occupy territories 
opened and prepared, in some degree, for human 
habitation. 

Not such was the landing which we commemo- 
rate to-day. Not such the event which has ren- 
dered this shortest day of all the year so memorable 
for ever in the annals of human freedom. It was 
the landing of a few weary and wave-worn men 
from a single ship, — nay, from a single shallop, — 



26 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

on a bleak and desolate shore, amid the storms and 
tempests of a well-nigh arctic winter, with none to 
welcome, none even to witness it. I might, indeed, 
be almost pardoned for saying, that the sun itself 
stood still in the heavens to behold it ! But there 
were, certainly, no other witnesses, save those wit- 
nesses to each other's constancy and courage who 
were themselves the actors in the scene, and that 
all-seeing, omnipresent God, who guided and 
guarded all their steps. 

Turn back with me to that epoch of the winter 
solstice, just two hundred and fifty years ago, and let 
us spend at least a portion of this flying hour in 
attempting to recall the precise incidents which 
then occurred on the spot on which we are assem- 
bled, with some of their immediate antecedents and 
consequences. There have been, and will be, other 
occasions for boasting, if any one desires to boast, 
of what New England has accomplished, directly 
or indirectly, for herself or for mankind, in later 
times. There have been, and will be, other oppor- 
tunities for a general glorification of New England 
principles. New England achievements, New Eng- 
land inventions and discoveries, past or present, 
remote or recent. We recognize them all to-day, 
— all, at least, that are worthy of being recognized 
at all, — as the legitimate result and development of 
this day's doings. We count and claim the progress 
of our country, in its best and worthiest sense, as the 



ORATION. 27 

"Pilgrims' Progress;" — as the grand and glorious 
advance upon a line of march in which they were 
the pioneers, and for which they, in their own 
expressive phrase, literally as well as metaphori- 
cally, were the instruments " to break the ice for 
others." 

To them the honors of this day are due. To their 
memories this Anniversar}^ is sacred. Once in fifty 
years, certainl}/, we may well refresh our remem- 
brance of what they did and suffered, and still more 
of the aims and ends of all their doings and suffer- 
ings. It is an old story, it is true; but there are 
some old stories which are almost forgotten into 
newness. There are some old stories which are 
actually new to every rising generation, and of 
whose real interest and nobleness thousands of 
young hearts receive their first vivid impression 
from what may be said or done on some occasion 
like the present. There are some old stories, too, 
of which even those who hold them in fondest and 
most familiar remembrance are never weary; and 
the appetite for which no repetitions can ever cloy, 
or even satisfy. There are some old stories, let 
me add, — and this is eminently one of them, — 
around which a haze, or it may be a halo, of legend 
and romance is gradually allowed to gather and 
thicken with the lapse of years, and which require 
and demand to be set forth afresh, from time to 
time, in their true simplicity and grandeur. 



28 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

But there is no longer an excuse for. doubt or 
uncertainty as to any substantial statement relating 
to the Pilgrim Fathers. Tradition, legend, romance, 
can find "no jutty, frieze, buttress, nor coigne of van- 
tage, for their pendent bed and procreant cradle," 
in that solid structure of fact and truth which has 
recently been built up, — let me rather sa}^ which 
has recently been discovered and unveiled, in all 
the simple beauty of its original proportions, — by 
the lovincf students and dilio-ent investig^ators of 
Pilgrim history. 

It is, indeed, a peculiar advantage of all young 
countries like our own, that, originating in a period 
of written and printed records, they may trace back 
the current of their career to its primal source and 
spring, without leaving room for any intermixture 
of myth or fable. Yet written or even printed 
records may disappear, or be overlooked and for- 
gotten for a time, — awaiting such a search and 
such a scrutiny as Grote and Niebuhr, and Merivale 
and Mommsen, have recently brought to the history 
of Greece or Rome ; or as Froude, even more re- 
markably, has just given to the history of England's 
Qiieen Elizabeth. 

Even such a search and such a scrutiny have of 
late been applied to the histor}^ of the little band 
whose landing we are here to commemorate, and 
most richly have they been rewarded. Since the 
last Jubilee of the Pilgrims was celebrated, fifty 



ORATION. 29 

3'ears ago, — when that grand discourse of New 
England's grandest orator and statesman summoned 
the attention of the world so emphaticall}' to their 
subHme but simple story, — antiquarians at home and 
abroad, pious and painstaking students, American 
travellers in foreign lands not forgetful of their own, 
one and all, have seemed inflamed with a new zeal 
to subject that story to the closest examination ; to 
sift out from it everything conjectural and legendary; 
and to investigate the Pilgrim track, footstep by 
footstep, wherever it could be found, in the Old 
World as well as in the New. Nothing has been 
too minute or trivial to elude their search; nothing 
too seemingly inscrutable to repel or discourage 
their pursuit; nothing too generally credited to sat- 
isfy their eagerness for positive proof and authentic 
verification. As the marvellous growth of that ma- 
jestic perennial, of which the Mayflower supplied 
the seed, has been developed and displayed, with 
all its myriad leaves for the healing of the nations, 
and all its magic branches for sweetening so many 
bitter fountains, and all its rich and varied fruits for 
ourselves and for mankind, they have been more and 
more incited to trace back that seed to its native 
bed; to analyze with almost chemical exactness its 
smallest seminal principles; and to ascertain pre- 
cisel}^ by what culture, and by what hands, it was 
made so to take root upon a rock, and to bud and 
blossom and bear so abundantlv in a wilderness. 



30 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

We owe these laborious investigators a deep debt 
of gratitude, and it is fit that we should not for- 
get them, this day, as we avail ourselves of their 
researches. I need but name the late admirable 
Judge Davis, whose excellent edition of " Morton's 
Memorial" led the way in the later illustrations of 
Pilgrim history. I need but name the late Reverend 
Dr. Alexander Young, whose "Chronicles of Plym- 
outh " ought to be fresh in the memory of every son 
and daughter of the old Colony. But let me recall 
more deliberatel}^ a venerable antiquary of Old Eng- 
land, whom it was my good fortune to meet at the 
breakfast-table of the celebrated historian Hallam, 
nearly a quarter of a century ago, — the late Rev- 
erend Joseph Hunter ; who, having diversified his 
routine of service, in her Majesty's Public Record 
Office, by tracts illustrative of the great triumphs of 
his own country in arms and in literature, — tri- 
umphs by the sword of Henry V. at Agincourt, and 
triumphs by the pens of Shakspeare and Milton in 
the fields of epic or dramatic poetry, — turned to the 
Pilgrims of Plymouth, and to the Puritans of Massa- 
chusetts, for the latest and best themes of his un- 
wearied investigations. To him we primaril}- owe 
it that we can follow back that little band, to which 
the name of Brownists had been contemptuously 
given, to the ver}' hive from which they first 
swarmed, — that little circle in Yorkshire and Not- 
tinghamshire, and not far from Lincolnshire, around 



ORATION. 31 

which he so fitly inscribed the legend, " Maximse 
gentis incunabula," — the cradle of the greatest 
nation. By the light of his antiquarian torch we 
are able to fix the precise locality and surround- 
ings of the old Manor Place of Scrooby, — formerly 
a palace of the Archbishops of York, and which had 
often been the residence of at least one of them, 
"that he might enjoy the diversion of hunting" 
in the neighboring chase of Hatfield; which was 
occupied as a refuge for many weeks by the great 
lord Cardinal Wolse}', when, having " ventured in a 
sea of glory, but far beyond his depth," he had at 
last been left, " weary and old with service, to the 
mercy of a rude stream," which was for ever to hide 
him; and which, not man}^ years afterwards, Henry 
the Eighth himself had selected for a resting-place, 
during one of his Royal progresses to the north; — 
but which, half a century later, had become the home 
of one, whose occupation of it, even for an hour, 
would have given it a celebrit}^ and a sanctity in our 
remembrance and regard, which neither Archbish- 
ops, nor Cardinals, nor Kings, could have imparted 
to it in a lifetime. 

There, in that " manor of the Bishops," of which, 
alas ! hardly a fragment is now left, lived William 
Brewster, — one of the noblest of the men whom 
we are here to commemorate, and not unworthy to 
be named first of all, on such an occasion as this. 
Educated at the University of Cambridge, and hav- 



32 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

ing served as the faithful Secretary of the accom- 
plished Davison (Qiieen Elizabeth's Ambassador in 
Holland, and afterwards one of her Secretaries of 
State), — until Davison's too prompt and implicit 
obedience to the orders of his Royal Mistress in the 
matter of poor Mary, Queen of Scots, had afforded 
a pretext for discarding him, — Brewster had retired 
with disgust from the pomps and vanities, the capri- 
ces and cruelties, of the Court, and had given him- 
self up to religious meditation and study. Deeply 
impressed with the corruptions and superstitions, 
the prelatical assumptions and tyrannies, of the 
English Church, as it then existed, in those earlier 
transition stages of the Reformation, he had united 
himself with one of the little bodies of Separatists 
from that communion, and soon became " a special 
help and stay to them." At his house, — this very 
"manor of the Bishops," which Mr. Hunter helped 
us to identify, — we learn that the members of the 
church of which the sainted Robinson was the pas- 
tor, the church of our Plymouth Pilgrims, "ordi- 
narily met on the Lord's Day; and with great love 
he entertained them when they came, making pro- 
vision for them to his great charge; and continued 
so to do while they could stay in England." 

Our mother country has many spots within her 
dominions which are dear to the hearts of the lovers 
of religious and of civil liberty in both hemispheres: 
The plain of Runnymede, the Lollard's Tower, the 



ORATION. 33 

Tower of London, the Martyrs' Monument at Ox- 
ford, the glorious Abbey of Westminster, the grand 
Cathedrals in almost every county; but I know of 
none more worth}^ of being visited with pious rever- 
ence, by every American traveller certainly, than 
that old original site of Brewster's residence in Not- 
tinghamshire; nor one which more deserves to be 
marked, not indeed by any ostentatious or sumptu- 
ous structure, out of all keeping with the plain and 
frugal character of those w^ho have made it mem- 
orable for ever, but by some appropriate monument, 
a chapel or a school-house, erected by the care and 
at the cost of the sons and daus^hters of New Ensf- 
land. We all remember that John Cotton's chapel 
at Old Boston was restored, not many years ago, by 
the contributions of a few of the generous sons of 
New Boston. The place where Robinson and 
Brewster gathered that first Pilgrim Church is cer- 
tainly not less worthy of commemoration. 

But it is not only the residence of Brewster which 
the researches of good Mr. Hunter, the very Nim- 
rod of Antiquaries, have revealed to us. There, 
within that charmed circle — the cradle of the great- 
est nation — he helped us to discover a birthplace, 
which owing to a blundering misprint had so long 
baffled the most eager search ; the birthplace of one 
who might almost: contest with Brewster himself the 
right to be named first at any commemoration of 
the Pilgrim Fathers, — their Governor for thirty 

5 



34 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

years, their Historian, their principal writer both in 
prose and verse, and second to no one of them, from 
first to last, in the fidelity and devotion with which 
he sustained and illustrated their principles. There, 
within that same charmed circle, of which the little 
market town of Bawtry is the centre, and the greater 
part, if not the whole, of which is now the property 
of one whose recent title, as a peer, has not obliter- 
ated our remembrance of his name as a poet, and 
who may be recalled with the more pleasure at this 
hour as one of the few among the English nobility 
who sympathized with the North in our late war for 
the Union, — there, in the record book of the little 
church of Austerfield, still standing, has been found 
the distinct entry, "William, son of William, Brad- 
fourth, baptized the XIX'.'! day of March, Anno Dili 

1589." 

I hold in my hand a photographic picture of that 
ancient edifice, and one, too, of the registered entry 
of Bradford's baptism, given me two or three years 
ago by Lord Houghton, — Monckton Milnes that 
was, — now Lord of the Manor, I believe, — and 
which I would gladly deposit in your Pilgrim Mu- 
seum, if they are not there already. 

The font from which Bradford was christened, 
and the altar-rails at which his parents doubtless 
kneeled — for he must have been baptized according 
to the rites, and by a pastor of the Church of Eng- 
land — are still preserved. But neither pastor nor 



ORATION. 35 

parents could have dreamed, as the infant boy winced, 
perhaps, from the coldness of that sprinkled water, 
and shrunk, it ma}^ be, from the signing with the sign 
of the cross upon his tiny forehead, how sturdy and 
uncompromising a hater he was to become, in his 
mature life, of all mere forms and shows and cere- 
monies of religion; and, at the same time, how 
earnest and ardent and devoted a lover and upholder 
of the great truths and doctrines of which these were 
but the outward and visible signs. 

Bradford and Brewster, if I mistake not, are the 
only two of our Pilgrim leaders, who can be dis- 
tinctly identified with that little church at Scrooby, 
of which the venerable Richard Clifton and the 
zealous John Robinson were the associated pastor 
and teacher, and out of which came this first per- 
manent settlement of New England. Bradford, 
indeed, was but a boy in age, at that early period, — 
hardly more than sixteen years old, an orphan boy, 
— and must have been like a son to Brewster, who 
was thirty years his senior; but he was a boy who 
seems to have known " little more of the state of 
childhood but its innocency and pleasantness," and 
who was capable, even then, of rendering no feeble 
aid and comfort to his maturer leader and friend. 
Together they braved persecution. Together they 
bore the taunts and scoffs of neighbors and relatives. 
Together they embraced exile. Together they were 
cast into prison at old Boston in Lincolnshire. 



86 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

Together, after a brief separation, — for Bradford 
was liberated first on account of his youth, — they 
found refuge in Holland. Together they embarked 
in the Mayflower. Together they were associated 
for three and twenty 3'ears, — for Brewster lived in 
a vigorous old age till 1643, — in establishing and 
ruling the Pilgrim plantation here at New Plym- 
outh. 

Brewster and Bradford, the ^neas and Ascanius 
of our grand Pilgrim Epic, — I might better have 
said, the Paul and Timothy, or be it Titus, of our 
New England, Plymouth, Separatist Church, — both 
of them laymen, but both of them, by life and 
word, by precept and example, showing forth the 
great doctrines of Christ, their Saviour, with a 
power and a persuasiveness which might well have 
been envied by any pastor or preacher or lordly prel- 
ate of that or an}^ other day: — For ever honored 
be their names in New England history and in New 
England hearts! Alas! that no portrait of either of 
them is left, — if, indeed, in their simplicity and 
modesty, they would ever have allowed one to be 
taken, — so that their image, as well as their names 
and their example, might be held up to the contem- 
plation of our country and of mankind for endless 
generations ! 

But the little church of which they were mem- 
bers was able, as we know, to maintain its precari- 
ous and perilous existence at Scrooby, for hardly 



ORATION. 37 

more than a single year, certainly for not more than 
two years. It could find indeed no safe refuge or 
resting-place in Old England; and having heard that 
in the Low Countries, as they were then called, 
there was freedom, or at least toleration, for differ- 
ences of religious faiths and forms, its members 
resolved to fly from persecution and establish them- 
selves in Holland. I will not attempt to describe 
the perils they encountered, and the sufterings they 
endured, in that flight; — the separations of children 
from parents, and of wives from husbands; the 
arrests and examinations, the fines and imprison- 
ments, to which so many of them were subjected; 
the "hair-breadth 'scapes" of one large party of 
them during a tempestuous voyage of fourteen days, 
in crossing the German Ocean, in an almost sinking 
ship. The whole story is familiar to you. It is 
enough that we find them all at last safel}^ in Amster- 
dam, where they are free to enjoy their pure and 
simple worship, and where the}^ remain quietly for 
another year. 

Not a trace is left of their residence in that then 
mighty mart, almost a second Venice; born of the 
sea, " built in the very lap of the floods, and encir- 
cled in their watery arms; " and claiming the whole 
ocean, from the Baltic to the Levant, not only as the 
field of its enterprise, but almost as its own right- 
ful inheritance and domain. Not a trace of them 
is left there. We only know that, finding they 



38 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

were in danger of being in«^olved in contentions 
about women's dresses and men's starched bands, 
and other such vital matters, which had sprung up 
in another little church of English Separatists which 
had fled there before them, and thus of being robbed 
of that harmony and peace which they prized above 
all earthly things, and which they had abandoned 
home and kindred and country to enjoy, — they 
thought it best to remove once more, and establish 
themselves at the neighboring inland city of Leyden. 
It was a great epoch in Dutch history, when 
the Pilgrims took up their abode in Holland, and 
began to habituate themselves to its " strange and 
uncouth " customs and language. It was the precise 
period at which, as the close and consummation of 
" the most tremendous war for liberty ever waged," 
our own Motley has terminated his admirable ac- 
count of "The United Netherlands," — to begin it 
again, we trust, at no distant day, and then to show 
us precisely what was going on in that interest- 
ing country while our Fathers were witnesses and 
partakers of its fortunes. Within a year after 
they reached Amsterdam, and the very year they 
removed to Leyden, the grand twelve 3^ears' truce 
between Spain and her revolted Colonies had been 
negotiated and ratified. Those Colonies had now^ 
virtually established their freedom and independ - 
ence. Olden Barneveldt and Prince Maurice had 
reconciled their animosities and rivalries for a time; 



ORATION. 39 

and the great Republic — henceforth, though not 
for ever, to be known and recognized as the United 
States of the Netherlands — was enjoying internal 
as well as external peace and rest, after a fearful 
struggle of forty years' duration. 

It is a charming coincidence, certainly, that the 
comino- of the Pilsfrims was thus simultaneous with 
the commencement of that blessed truce, which 
was destined, too, by its own limitation, to last dur- 
ing the precise period of their stay there. One 
might almost picture the bow of peace and promise, 
lifting itself in all its many-colored glories, and over- 
arching that blood-stained soil, to welcome the little 
band of fugitives for conscience' sake to their tem- 
porary repose, and to assure them that war should 
crimson its fields no more while they should bless 
it with their presence! 

At Leyden, they find, as Bradford says, "a fair 
and beautiful city, and of a sweet situation, but made 
more famous by the Universit}'^ wherewith it is 
adorned, in which of late had been so many learned 
men." That was, certainly, a noble University, 
erected as a monument to the heroism of those who 
had fought and fallen in the dreadful siege which 
the city had endured so grandly in 1574, — erected 
in the same spirit in which our Memorial Hall has 
recently been founded at Cambridge by the Alumni 
of Harvard. Famous professors, and famous schol- 
ars also, it had indeed enjoyed. The learned 



40 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

Arminius had died just as the Pilgrims arrived 
there, but his teachings and doctrines were left to 
be the subject of endless disputation. The marvel- 
lous Joseph Scaliger, too, had died the same year; 
but his not less marvellous pupil, Hugo Grotius, 
was only at the outset of his great career, having 
published his Latin Tragedy, " The Suffering 
Christ," the very year of their arrival at Amster- 
dam, and his " Mare Liberum " the year of their 
removal to Leyden. 

The youthful Bradford may not, perhaps, have 
been much in the way of taking note or notice of 
what was going on at this great seat of learning, 
as, in default of other means of support, he had put 
himself as an apprentice to a French Protestant, 
and was acquiring the art of dyeing silk. But Brews- 
ter had found employment as a tutor to some of the 
youth of the city and the University, and was teach- 
ing them the English language by a grammar of his 
ovvn construction; while, at the same time, he had set 
up a printing-press, and " was instrumental in pub- 
lishing several books against the hierarch}^, which 
could not obtain a license in England." To him the 
University and its learned professors, and all their 
proceedings and lectures, must have been as famil- 
iar as they were interesting. His revered friend 
and pastor, Robinson, moreover, — as we learn from 
the researches of an accomplished and lamented 
New England scholar and traveller (the late Mr. 



ORATION. , 41 

George Sumner), — was formally admitted to the 
privileges of a member or subject of the University 
four or five years after his arrival at Leyden. By 
the investigations of Mr. Sumner, too, and of a late 
American Minister at the Hague, the Hon. Henry 
C. Murphy, we have been enabled to identify the 
very spot, in the Cathedral Church of St. Peter, where 
the precious remains of this holy man, whose mem- 
ory is so dear to New England, were at least tem- 
porarily deposited; while the record of that burial 
has also most happily helped us to fix the exact 
place of his residence as long as he lived there. In 
that residence, — and not in any church edifice, for 
they had none, — there is the best reason for think- 
ing that the Pilgrims worshipped; and thanks to the 
pious pains of the Rev. Henry Martyn Dexter, of 
Boston, whose labors in the cause of Pilgrim his- 
tory I may find further cause for acknowledging, a 
plate has been affixed to the walls of the building 
which now stands on that site, inscribed, " On this 
spot lived, taught and died, John Robinson, 
i6i 1-1625." 

I cannot forget that I lingered in Leyden, for some 
hours, two or three years ago, for the single pur- 
pose of visiting that site, and the place of the 
grave of him who made it so memorable for ever; 
but I could find no one at hand to point either 
of them out for me; and, but for the record of Mr. 
Sumner and the inscription of Dr. Dexter, I might 



42 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

have missed all that there is there to recall the 
memory of the Fathers of New England. For, in- 
deed, this is all, — the place of a temporary grave 
and the site of a dwelling long ago levelled to the 
ground, — this is absolutely all which can be iden- 
tified of the Pilgrims' home at Leyden for eleven 
years. Yet no New Englander, I think, can visit 
that city on an early autumn or a late summer's day, 
and behold' the ancient buildings on which their 
eyes must have been accustomed to look; and gaze 
on the countless canals, and on the flowing river, on 
the bosom of which they must so often have sailed, 
and on the banks of which they must so often have 
rested ; and drink in that soft, hazy, golden sunshine, 
which one of the great masters of that region 
(Cuyp), not far from the very time and place at 
vv^hich they were enjoying it, was engaged in making 
the chief charm of not a few of his most exquisite 
landscapes, — without being conscious of the inspi- 
ration of the scene; nor without feeling and acknowl- 
edging that there is, and will for ever be, a magnetic 
sympathy between Leyden and Plymouth Rock, 
which no material batteries or tangible wires are 
needed to kindle and keep alive. 

Leyden must indeed have been, as we know it 
was, most dear to the hearts of the Pilgrim Fathers^ 
There they found rest and safety. There, to use 
their own language, they enjoyed " much sweet and 
delightful society and spiritual comfort together in 



ORATION. 43 

the ways of God," and "lived together in peace and 
love and holiness." But there, too, they were joined 
by not a few of those who were to be most service- 
able and most dear to them in their future experi- 
ences and trials. 

There they were joined by John Carver, of 
whom we know enough for his own glory, and for 
his perpetual remembrance among men, in know- 
ing almost nothing except that he was counted 
worthy to be chosen the first Governor of the 
little band, and that he died, here at Pl3^mouth, 
after a brief career, in the faithful discharge of that 
office. 

There Robert Cushman joined them, who, in 
spite of some infirmities of temper and some infelic- 
ities of conduct, and though at one time he seemed 
to have "put his hand to the plough and to have 
looked back," and was missing from the group 
whose advent we celebrate to-day, came over not 
long afterwards, reinstated in the confidence of 
those with whom he had been so prominently asso- 
ciated at Leyden; delivered, in the Common House 
of the Plantation, that memorable sermon on Self- 
Love, the first printed sermon of New England, if 
not of our whole continent; and, after a perhaps pre- 
mature return home, continued to watch carefully 
over the interests of the Pilgrims in England, writ- 
ing letters remarkable alike for the beauty of their 
style and for the prudence of their counsel; and was 



44 



PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 



lamented by Bradford, when he heard of his death 
in 1624, as "a wise and faithful friend." 

There they were joined by Miles Standish, the 
intrepid soldier and famous captain of New Eng- 
land; who, having served on the side of the Dutch 
in the armies of England in the war against Spain, 
and having now been released by the great truce 
from further campaigning in the Old World, united 
himself with the Pilgrims, and, though not a mem- 
ber of their church, followed their fortunes, and 
fought their battles gallantly to the end. A little 
man himself, — hardly more than live feet high, 
— the grand army with which he performed "his 
most capital exploit " was probably the smallest 
which was ever mustered for a serious conflict in 
the annals of human warfare, — only eight men 
besides their leader. But, "in small room large 
heart inclosed," he had acquired, not perhaps 
from Caesar's Commentaries, his favorite study, but 
certainly from some other source, a knowledge 
which 'iome of the ruthless warriors of the present 
day have failed to exhibit, — the knowledge where 
to stop, as well as when to strike; and, having 
secured a signal victory, he brought home in safety 
every man whom he carried out. Honor to Miles 
Standish, " the stalwart captain of Plymouth," of 
whose restrained wrath, when the Puritan influence 
had come in to temper the profanity for which there 
was a proverbial license in Flanders, our charming 



ORATION. 45 

Longfellow would seem to have caught the very 
accent and cadence, when he says of it, — 

" Sometimes it seemed like a prayer, and sometimes it sounded like 
swearing ; " 

and whose threefold accomplishments he so tersely 
sums up, when he describes him as doubting 

"Which of the three he should choose for his consolation and comfort, 
Whether the wars of the Hebrews, the famous campaigns of the 

Romans, 
Or the artillery practice, designed for belligerent Christians." 

A higher tribute to the fidelity, vigilance, and 
courage of the old Plymouth captain could hardly 
have been paid, than when the late venerable Judge 
Davis, — a Plymouth man, and full of the original 
Plymouth spirit, — not many years before his death, 
unwilling to be wanting to the volunteer patrol 
service, in Boston, on some occasion of real or 
imaginary peril, made solemn application to our 
old Massachusetts Historical Society for the use 
of one of his reputed — albeit somewhat rusty — 
swords, and walked the midnight round with that 
for his trusty and all-sufficient companion. 

But there, too, at Leyden, they were joined, — by 
the accidents of travel, as it would seem, — in 1617, 
by one of the vei^y noblest of our little band, who 
was soon associated most leadingly and lovingly 
with all their spiritual as well as temporal concerns; 
their Governor for three years, when Bradford had 
"by importunity got off;" the narrator and chron- 



46 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

icier of not a few of the most interesting passages 
of their history; the leader of not a few of their 
most important enterprises; a man of eminent activ- 
ity, resolution, and bravery; who did not shrink from 
offering himself as a hostage to the savages, while 
a conference was held and a treaty made with one 
of their barbarous chieftains; who did not shrink 
from imprisonment, and the danger of death, in con- 
fronting, as an agent of Plymouth and Massachusetts, 
the tyrannical Archbishop Laud; who earned a 
gentler and more practical title to remembrance as 
the importer of the first neat cattle ever introduced 
into New England; an earnest and devoted friend 
to the civilization of the Indian tribes and their con- 
version to Christianity; the chief commissioner of 
Oliver Cromwell in his warlike designs upon an 
island, which our own hero President has so recently 
attempted to secure by peaceful purchase : — Edward 
WiNSLOW, — the only one of the Pilgrim Fathers of 
whom we have an authentic portrait; whose old 
seat of Careswell, at Marshfield, was the chosen 
home of Webster; and whose remains, had they not 
been committed to the deep, when he died so sadly 
on the sea, at the close of his unsuccessful expedi- 
tion to St. Domingo, would have been counted 
among the most precious dust which New England^ 
could possess. 

Leyden must indeed have been dear to the Pil- 
grims, as the place where so many of these leading 



ORATION. 47 

spirits first entered into their association, and first 
pledged their Hves and fortunes to the sacred 
enterprise. 

But Leyden, and the whole marvellous land of 
which it was at that day one of the most interesting 
and enlightened cities, had a charm for our Fore- 
fathers far above all mere personal considerations. 
It was a land to which the great German poet, 
dramatist, and historian, Schiller, in his " Revolt of 
the Netherlands," gave the noblest testimony, in say- 
ing that " every injury inflicted by a tyrant gave a 
right of citizenship in Holland." It was a land to 
which that quaint old Suffolk County essayist, 
Owen Felltham, paid a still higher tribute when he 
described it as " a place of refuge for sectaries of 
all denominations." " Let but some of our Separa- 
tists be asked," said he, with evident reference to 
our English exiles of whom he was a contemporary, 
" let but some of our Separatists be asked, and they 
shall swear that the Elysian Fields are there." " If 
you are unsettled," says he in another place, " if 
you are unsettled in your religion, you may tr}^ here 
all, and take at last what you like best. If you 
fancy none, you have a pattern to follow of two 
that would be a church by themselves." 

Yes, that was exactly it, — "a Church by them- 
selves;" and there, in that church by themselves, 
our Pilgrim Fathers first tasted the sweets of civil 
and religious freedom, and enjoyed that liberty to 



48 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

worship God, according to the dictates of their 
own consciences, which to them was worth every 
sacrifice and above all price. There, too, just 
as they removed from Amsterdam to Leyden, the 
extraordinary sound was heard, — from the lips 
of a Roman Catholic, and in behalf of his Roman 
Catholic brethren, — of an appeal for liberty of 
conscience which was never surpassed by the 
founders of Rhode Island, Maryland, or Pennsyl- 
vania. " Those," said President Jeannin, most forci- 
bly and eloquently, on taking leave of the States 
General, " those cannot be said to share any enjoy- 
ment from whom has been taken the power of serv- 
ing God according to the religion in which they 
were brought up. On the contrary, no slavery is 
more intolerable nor more exasperates the mind 
than such restraint. You know this well, my Lords 
States; you know, too, that it was the principal, 
the most puissant cause that made you fly to arms 
and scorn all dangers, in order to effect your deliv- 
erance from this servitude. You know that it has 
excited similar movements in various parts of Chris- 
tendom, and even in the kingdom of France, with 
such fortunate success everywhere as to make it 
appear that God had so willed it, in order to prove 
that religion ought to be taught and inspired by the 
movements which come from the Holy Ghost, and 
not by the force of man." 

We know not precisely how far the ears of the 



ORATION. 49 

Pilgrims may have been regaled, and their hearts 
encouraged and strengthened, by this grand appeal 
from so unaccustomed a source. Brewster, who, 
as we have seen, had been in the Low Countries 
before, as Secretary to the English Ambassador, 
may hardly have been ignorant of it. But, at all 
events, it affords most significant testimon}^ to the 
spirit of religious liberty which pervaded the land 
in which such words at that period could have been 
uttered; and, coming from the lips of a Romanist, it 
must have put to shame any Protestant bigotr}^ or 
intolerance, if any such were lurking there, which 
might have restrained the full freedom of our Eng- 
lish exiles. Dr. Belknap, in his American Biogra- 
phy, may, perhaps, have anticipated events in stating, 
as he does, that Robinson himself, about this time, 
after a friendly conference with one upon whose name 
he had recently made a petulant pun, in an angry 
controversy, — changing it reproachfully from Ames 
to Amiss, — relaxed the rigor of his Separatism ; 
published a book, allowing and defending the lawful- 
ness of communicating with the Church of England; 
"allowed pious members of the Church of England, 
and of all the reformed churches, to communicate 
with his church; and declared that he separated 
from no church, but from the corruptions of all 
churches." But the statement was substantiall}^ 
true of a later period, if not of this. The book, he 
adds, gained him the title of a Semi-Separatist, and 



50 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

was so offensive to the rigid Brownists of Amster- 
dam that they would scarcely hold communion with 
the Church of Leyden. 

But, alas! more serious dissensions than these 
were soon to agitate again that whole united Repub- 
lic, and to involve it in a crime of which all the 
multitudinous seas which surround it could hardly 
wash out the stain. The successor to the chair of 
Arminius in the University of Leyden (Vorstius) 
had not only stirred up " hearts of controversy " in 
his own land by teaching and preaching the peculiar 
doctrines of his master, but had roused the special 
indignation of the Royal theological polemic and 
titular Defender of the Faith across the channel, — 
that same James I., who a few years before had cut 
short a conference with the Puritan leaders, at 
Hampton Court, by declaring that " he would make 
them conform or he would harry them out of the 
land," and who, in this respect certainly, had been 
as good as his word. The recent assassination 
of his glorious fellow-sovereign, Henry IV. of 
France, had revived and quickened his antipathy not 
to Roman Catholics only, but to all religionists 
who did not agree with himself; and he had the 
insolence now to demand that the obnoxious Pro- 
fessor of Leyden should be dismissed from his chair 
and banished from the States, — leaving it, also, to 
their " Christian wisdom " whether he should not be 
burned at the stake for " his atheism and blasphe- 



ORATION. 5 1 

mies." The States were compelled to comply, and 
did most humiliatingly comply, with this demand; 
but the banishment of Vorstius only the more 
inflamed the theological strife which raged through- 
out their dominions. Prince Maurice and Olden 
Barneveldt were again at each other's throats; the 
former as the leader of the Calvinist party, and the 
latter as the leader of the Arminians, with Grotius 
as his second. And, incredible as it seems to us at 
this hour, the controversy was only terminated by 
one of the most infamous judicial murders which 
pollute the annals of mankind; taking its loath- 
some place in the calendar of crime by the side of 
the execution of Sir Walter Raleigh, the year before, 
and of Algernon Sydney and Lord William Russell 
half a century later. On the 13th of May, 1619, 
Olden Barneveldt, the noble patriot and benefactor, 
second to no one among the founders of the Repub- 
lic and the authors of its liberties, was condemned 
to death and beheaded at the Hague; while Grotius 
was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment, — from 
which, however, the ingenuity of his wife happily 
released him at the end of two years. 

I would gladly have found some allusion to these 
monstrous outrages in some of the journals or letters 
of the Pilgrims. Occurring, as they did, during the 
very last year of their residence there, I would 
gladly believe that some abhorrence of such crimes 
may have mingled with their motives for seeking 



52 



PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 



another place of refuge. Although their religious 
sympathies were strongly with the Calvinist party, 
and their pastor, Robinson, had disputed publicly 
against the doctrines of Arminius, — putting his 
antagonist Episcopius, the Arminian Professor, to 
" an apparent nonplus," as Bradford tells us, " not 
once only, but a second and third time, before a 
great and public audience, and winning a famous 
victory for the truth," and " much honor and respect 
for those who loved the truth," — yet he and Brews- 
ter and Bradford and Winslow must have shrunk 
with horror from this atrocious murder. There is 
good reason for believing that Brewster, indeed, left 
Leyden with his famil3Miot many weeks afterwards; 
and I will not doubt that such events increased the 
eagerness of them all once more to change the 
place of their habitation, and hastened their negotia- 
tions with the merchant adventurers in London. 

But their purpose of quitting Holland had been 
conceived nearly two years before this terrible 
tragedy was enacted. As early as the autumn of 
1617, Robert Cushman and John Carver had been 
sent as their agents to attempt an arrangement for 
their removal to America with the Virginia Com- 
pany in London; and in 1618 the Church of Ley- 
den — with a view to removing the objections, and 
conciliating the favor of the King and others — had 
adopted those memorable Seven Articles, first pub- 
lished in 1856 by our accomplished historian Ban- 



ORATION. 53 

croft, in which the authority of his Majesty and of 
his Bishops is acknowledged, with an unquaHfied 
assent " to the confession of faith published in the 
name of the Church of England and to every article 
thereof." The adoption of these " Seven Articles," 
and the appeals addressed to Sir Edwin Sandys and 
others by Brewster and Robinson, at length elicited 
an assurance that " both the King and the Bishops 
had consented to wink at their departure." 

" Conniving at them and w^inking at their depart- 
ure " were all the assurances they could wring from 
Royalty. " To allow or tolerate them by his public 
authority, under his seal, they found it would not 
be." And though the Virginia Company were 
strongly desirous to have them go to America under 
their auspices, and willing to grant them a patent 
with as ample privileges as they could grant to any 
one, the feuds and factions in the council of the 
Company occasioned such delays that no patent was 
sealed until the 9th of June, 1619; and, after all the 
labor and cost of procuring it, it was never made 
use of. An agreement, however, was entered into 
with Thomas Weston and other merchant adven- 
turers; the Ma37flower was hired to await them at 
Southampton; the Speedwell was bought to take 
them over to England, and keep them company 
afterwards; a day of solemn humiliation was spent, 
— after a parting sermon from Robinson, who was 
to remain behind with half the members of his 



54 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

church, — " in pouring out prayers to the Lord with 
great fervency mixed with abundance of tears,'' and 
so they proceeded to Delft Haven; and after another 
most touching parting scene, all kneeling in prayer 
and taking leave of each other, " with mutual em- 
braces and many tears," the sail was hoisted, and 
with a prosperous wind they came in a short time 
to Southampton. There they found "the bigger 
ship come from London, lying ready, with all the 
rest of their company." A few days more are 
occupied in dealing with their agents and the mer- 
chant adventurers; a noble farewell letter from 
Robinson is received and read; and once more they 
set sail. A leak in the Speedwell compels them to 
put in at Dartmouth, and then again, after they had 
gone above a hundred leagues beyond Land's End, 
to put back to Plymouth^ and to abandon the Speed- 
well altogether. At last, "these troubles being 
blown over, and now all being compact together in 
one ship, they put to sea again with a prosperous 
wind;" and on the i6th day of September, 1620, 
Old England is parted from for ever. The May- 
flower, and its one hundred and two passengers, 
have entered on the voyage, which is to end not 
merely in founding a more memorable Plymouth 
than that which they left behind, but in laying the 
corner-stone of a mightier and freer nation than the 
sun in its circuit had ever before shone upon. 

England at the moment took no note of their 



ORATION. 55 

departing. Her philosophers and statesmen and 
poets had not quite yet begun to appreciate the 
losses which religious persecution was entailing 
upon her. Lord Bacon, indeed, " the great Secre- 
tary of Nature and all learning," as Isaac Walton 
called him, had already foreshadowed the glory 
which was to be gained by some of his Sutfolk and 
Lincolnshire neighbors, when, in one of his cele- 
brated essays, he assigned the first place, "in the true 
marshalling of the degrees of sovereign honor," to the 
'^^ conditores imperiorum^ — the founders of States and 
Commonwealths." But it was more than ten years 
afterwards before the saintly Herbert published those 
noted lines, which the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge 
had so much hesitation about licensing : — 

" Religion stands on tiptoe in our land, 
Readie to passe to the American strand." 

And it was nearly ten years later still, when John 
Milton, in his treatise " Of Reformation in England," 
exclaimed, " What numbers of faithful and free-born 
Englishmen, and good Christians, have been con- 
strained to forsake their dearest home, their friends 
and kindred, whom nothing but the wide ocean, and 
the savage deserts of America, could hide and shel- 
ter from the fury of the bishops! Oh, sir, if we 
could but see the shape of our dear mother England, 
as poets are wont to give a personal form to what 
they please, how would she appear, think ye, but in 
a mourning weed, with ashes upon her head, and 



56 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

tears abundantly flowing from her eyes, to behold 
so many of her children exposed at once, and thrust 
from things of dearest necessity, because their con- 
science could not assent to things which the bishops 
thought indifferent! " 

But the time was to come when England was to 
make signal recognition of this memorable Exodus. 
Little did they imagine, — those pious, humble, 
simple-hearted men and women, as they stood on 
the deck of their little bark of only one hundred and 
eighty tons' burthen, and looked wistfully upon their 
native shores receding from their moistened eyes, — 
little did they imagine that the scene of that embarka- 
tion, before two centuries and a half had passed away, 
should not only be among the most cherished orna- 
ments of the Rotundo of the American Capitol, but 
should be found, as it is found this day, among the 
most conspicuous frescoes in the corridors of the 
Parliament Houses of Old England. Still less could 
the haughty Monarch and the bigoted Prelates, who 
had reluctantly been induced "to connive and wink 
at their departure," have dreamed, that such a picture 
shpuld ever be warranted and welcomed by their 
successors, as one of the appropriate scenes for 
inspiring and for warning them, as they should 
sweep along, through the grand galleries of State, to 
their places on the throne or the Episcopal bench, 
in that gorgeous Chamber of the temporal and 
spiritual Lords of Great Britain. 



ORATION. 57 

But this would not be the only souvenir of the 
Pilgrim Fathers which might suffuse the cheeks of 
a Bancroft, a Wren, or a Laud, could they be per- 
mitted to revisit the scenes of their old prelatical 
intolerance and arrogance. 

The suburban residence of the Bishop of London 
at Fulham has many charms. Its velvet lawn, its 
wallss upon the Thames, its grand old oaks and 
cedars of Lebanon, its fine historical portraits, its 
rare library, its beautiful modern chapel, and, above 
all, its antique hall, recently restored, — in which the 
cruel Bonner and the noble Ridley may have succes- 
sively held their councils during the struggles of the 
Reformation, and where Bancroft and Laud may have 
concerted their schemes of bigotry and persecution, — 
render it altogether one of the most interesting places 
near London, and hardly less attractive than Lambeth 
itself I have been privileged to visit it on more 
than one of those delicious afternoons of an English 
June, when the apartments and the grounds were 
thronged by all that was most distinguished in the 
society of the Metropolis, assembled to pay their 
respects to one whose exalted character, and earnest 
piety, and liberal churchmanship, and unsparing 
devotion to the humblest as well as the highest 
duties of his station, have won for him universal 
esteem, respect, and affection, and who has recently 
been called by the Qiieen to the Primacy of all 
England. But I need hardl}' say, that to an Ameri- 



58 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

can, or certainly to a New England eye, there was 
nothing in all the treasures of art, or of antiquity, or 
of literature, which that palace contained, — nothing 
in all the loveliness of its natural scenery and sur- 
roundings, nothing in all the historical associations 
of the spot, nothing in all the be^luty and accom- 
plishments and titled or untitled celebrity of the 
company gathered beneath the roof or scattered 
upon the lawn, — which could compare for a moment 
with the interest of an old manuscript volume, which 
strangely enough had found its way there, of all 
places in the world, and which had rested for three 
quarters of a century almost unidentified and unrec- 
ognized on its library-shelves. You will all have 
anticipated me when I *say that it is the long-lost 
manuscript volume, of which but a small portion had 
ever been printed or copied, written by the hand of 
William Bradford himself, and giving the detailed 
story of the Pilgrim Fathers from their first gather- 
ing at Scrooby down to the year 1647. 

My valued friend, Mr. Charles Deane, to whom, 
above almost all others, we are indebted for throw- 
ing light upon the early history of New England, in 
the edition of this volume which he so admirabl}' 
prepared and annotated for the Collections of the 
Massachusetts Historical Society, has sufficiently 
described the circumstances of its discovery. When 
the glad tidings first reached us, I did not fail to 
sympathize with those who felt that a more rightful 



ORATION. 69 

as well as more congenial and appropriate place for 
such a manuscript might be found on this side of 
the Atlantic. But after a little more reflection, and 
after we had secured an exact and complete trans- 
cript of it for publication, I could not help feeling 
that there was something of special fitness and feli- 
city 'in its being left precisely where it is. There 
let it rest, as a remembrancer to all who shall suc- 
ceed, generation after generation, to that famous 
See and its charming palace, of the simple faith, the 
devoted piety, the brave obedience to the dictates 
of conscience, of those who led the way in the col- 
onization of New England, and who endured so 
heroically the persecutions and perils which that 
great enterprise involved ! 

How it would have ^ratified the honest heart of 
Bradford himself, could he have known*where his 
precious volume should at length be found, and in 
what estimation it should be held after it was found! 
How it would have delighted him to know that 
instead of being set down in some " Index Expur- 
gatorius," or burned at St. Paul's Cross, as com- 
pounded of heresy and blasphemy, — as it would 
have been by those who dwelt or congregated at 
Fulham at the time it was written, — it should be 
sacredly guarded among the heirlooms of the palace 
and its successive occupants! How much more it 
would have delighted him to know that so much of 
the simplicity and liberahty of form and faith which 



60 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

it portrayed and inculcated, would be cherished and 
exemplified by more than one of those under whose 
official custody it was in these latter days to fall! 

Few persons, I presume, will doubt that had the 
Church of England, between 1608 and 1620, been 
what it is to-day, and its Bishops and Archbishops 
such in life and in spirit as those who have recently 
presided at London and Canterbury, Brewster and 
Bradford would hardly have left Scrooby, and the 
Mayflower might long have been employed in less 
interesting ways than in bringing Separatists to 
Plymouth Rock. As that church and its prelates 
then were, let us thank God that such Separatists 
were found! An Episcopalian myself, by election 
as well as by education, and warmly attached to the 
forms and the faith in which I was brought up; believ- 
ing that the Church of England has rendered inesti- 
mable service to the cause of religion in furnishing 
a safe and sure anchorage in so many stormy times, 
when the minds of men were ''" tossed to and fro, 
and carried about with every wind of doctrine;" 
and prizing that very prayer-book, — which was dis- 
owned and discarded by Bradford and Brewster, 
and by Winthrop, too, — as second only to the Bible 
in the richness of its treasures of prayer and praise; 
I yet rejoice, as heartily as any Congregationalist 
who listens to me, that our Pilgrim Fathers were 
Separatists. 

I rejoice, too, that the Puritan Fathers of Mas- 



ORATION. 61 

sachiisetts, who followed them to these shores 
ten years afterwards, — though, to the last, they 
" esteemed it their honor to call the Church of 
England their dear mother, and could not part from 
their native countr}', where she specially resideth, 
without much sadness of heart and many tears," — 
were, if not technically and professedly, yet to all 
intents and purposes. Separatists, also; — Semi- 
Separatists at least, as Robinson himself was called 
when he wrote and published that book which so 
offended the Brownists. I rejoice that the prelatical 
assumptions and tyrannies of that day were re- 
sisted. The Church of England would never have 
been the noble church it has since become, had 
there been no seasonable protest against its cor- 
ruptions, its extravagant formalism, and its over- 
bearing intolerance. The earliest Separatists were 
those who separated from Rome; and when some- 
thing more than a disposition was manifested to 
return towards Rome, in almost every thing except 
the acknowledgment of its temporal supremacy, 
another separation could not have been, ought 
not to have been, avoided. A serious renewal of 
such manifestations at this day, I need not say, 
would rend the Anglican Church asunder ; and its 
American daughter would, under similar circum- 
stances, deservedly share its fate. Pretensions of 
human infallibility need not be proclaimed by an 
Ecumenical Council in order to be offensive and 



62 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

abhorrent. It does not require a conclave of Cardi- 
nals to render assumptions and proscriptions and 
excommunications odious. Convocations and Con- 
ventions, and even Synods and Councils and Confer- 
ences, will answ^er just as well. When so much of 
the discipline of the English Church was devoted to 
matters of form and ceremony; when spiritualism 
was in danger of forgetting its first syllable, and of 
degenerating into an empty ritualism; when godly 
ministers were silenced for "scrupling the vest- 
ments," or for preaching an evening lecture, and men 
and women and children were punished for not bow- 
ing in the Creed, or kneeling at the altar, or for hav- 
ing family pra3'ers under their own roof, — separation 
— call it Schism, if you will — was the true resort 
and the only remedy. For the sake of the church 
itself, but a thousand-fold more for the sake of 
Christianity, which is above all churches, it was 
needful that a great example of such a separation 
should be exhibited at all hazards and at any sacri- 
fice. The glorious Luther, to whose memory that 
majestic monument has so recently been erected at 
Worms, had furnished such an example in his own 
da}^ and land, and with relation to the church of 
which he had once been a devoted disciple. No 
name may be compared with his name in the grand^ 
calendar of Separatists. But our Pilgrim Fathers 
were humble followers in the same path of Protes- 
tantism, and thanks be to God that their hearts were 



ORATION. 63 

inspired and emboldened to imitate his heroic 
course. 

I would not seem too harsh towards those old 
prelates of the English Church, by whom Pilgrims 
or Pui;itans were persecuted. Sir James Mackin- 
tosh, I think, has somewhere said, that if the United 
Netherlands had erected a statue to the real author 
of all their liberties, it would have been to the Duke 
of Alva, whose abominable tyranny goaded the 
Dutch to desperation, and drove them into re- 
bellion. I am not sure that, on this principle, New 
England might not well include Bancroft and Laud 
in her gallery of eminent benefactors. We must 
never forget, however, that almost all great move- 
ments are but the resultants of opposing forces; and 
that, in impressing upon them their final shape and 
direction, those who resist are hardly less effective 
than those who support and urge. Nor can it be 
forgotten that, in the turn of the wheel of England's 
fortunes, poor Laud was himself destined to per- 
secution and martyrdom. It must have been a grim 
joke, when Hugh Peters and others proposed to send 
him over to New England for punishment, as his 
Breviate tells us they did; and it might be a matter 
for curious conjecture what would have happened to 
him, had he come here then. But the meekness 
and bravery and Christian heroism with which he 
bore his fate, when so wantonly and barbarously 
brought to the block, after four years of imprison- 



64 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

ment in the Tower, are almost enough to make us 
forget that he was ever so haughty and insolent and 
cruel, and quite enough to extinguish all resentment 
of his wrongs. 

But let me not longer delay to acknowledge, on 
this occasion, the deep debt which New England and 
our whole country owes to the Congregationalism 
which the Pilgrims established on our soil, and of 
which the very first church in America was planted 
by them here at Plymouth. My whole heart is in 
sympathy with the celebration of this Jubilee to be 
held in my native city, this evening, by the Con- 
gregationalists of our land. They would wrong 
themselves, indeed, as well as all who are not of 
their own communion, were they to celebrate it in 
any narrow, controversial spirit, and to turn a 
national into a merely denominational anniversary. 
But it would be doing them deep injustice to suggest 
or imagine such a thing. They have a right to cele- 
brate it, and they will celebrate it, as a day whose 
associations and influences have far outreached every 
thing sectarian and every thing sectional, and which 
are as comprehensive as the land they live in, and 
as all-embracing as the Christianity they profess 
and cherish. 

Few persons, if any, can hesitate to agree with 
them, that no other system of church government 
than Congregationalism could have been successful 
in New England at that day. No other system 



ORATION. 65 

could have done so much for religion ; no other 
sj^stem could have done so much for liberty, re- 
ligious or civil. " The meeting-house, the school- 
house, and the training field," said old John Adams, 
"are the scenes where New England men were 
formed." He did not intend to omit the town- 
house, for no one was more sensible than himself 
how much of New England education and charac- 
ter was owing to our little municipal organizations, 
and to the free consultations and discussions of our 
little town meetings. But he was right in naming 
" the meeting-house " first. Certainly, for the cause 
of religious freedom, no other security could have 
compared with the independent S3^stem of church 
government. Independent churches prepared the 
way for Independent States and an Independent 
Nation; and formed the earliest and most enduring 
barriers and bulwarks at once against hierarchies 
and monarchies. 

That work fully and finally accomplished, and 
civil and religious freedom securely established, we 
may all be more/" than content, we all ought to 
rejoice, as we witness the association and the pros- 
perous advancement, under whatever name or form 
they may choose to enroll themselves, of " all who 
profess and call themselves Christians," — studying 
ever, as Edward Winslow tells us the sainted 
Robinson studied, towards his latter end, " peace 
and union as far as might agree with faith and a 



66 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

good conscience." Let those who will, indulge in 
the dream, or cherish the waking vision, of a single 
universal Church on earth, recognized and accepted 
of men, whose authority is binding on every con- 
science and decisive of every point of faith or form. 
To the eye of God, indeed, such a Church may be 
visible even now, in " the blessed company of all 
faithful people," in whatever region they may dwell, 
with whatever organization they may be connected, 
with Him as their head, "of whom the whole family 
in earth and heaven is named." And as, in some 
grand orchestra, hundreds of performers, each with 
his own instrument and his own separate score, strike 
widely variant notes, and produce sounds, some- 
times in close succession and sometimes at length- 
ened intervals, which heard alone would seem to 
be wanting in every thing like method or melody, 
but which heard together are found delighting 
the ear, and ravishing the soul, with a flood of 
magnificent harmony, as they give concerted ex- 
pression to the glowing conceptions of some mighty 
master, like him, the centennial anniversary of 
whose birthday has just been commemorated, — 
even so, — even so, it may be, — from the diflfering, 
broken, and often seemingly discordant strains of 
sincere seekers after God, the Divine ear, upon 
which no lisp of the voice or breathing of the heart 
is ever lost, catches only a combined and glorious 
anthem of prayer and praise! 



ORATION. 67 

But to human ears such harmonies are not vouch- 
safed. The Church, in all its majestic unity, shall 
be revealed hereafter. The "Jerusalem, which is 
the mother of us all, is above;" and we can only 
humbly hope that, in the providence of God, its gates 
shall be wider, and its courts fuller, and its members 
quickened and multiplied, by the very differences of 
form and of doctrine which have divided Christians 
from each other on earth, and which have created 
something of competition and rivalry, and even of 
contention, in their efforts' to advance the ends of 
their respective denominations. Absolute religious 
uniformity, as poor human nature is now constituted, 
would but too certainly be the cause, if it were not 
itself the consequence, of absolute religious indiffer- 
ence and stagnation. 

Pardon me, fellow-citizens and friends, for a 
digression, — if it be one, — in which I may almost 
seem to have forgotten that I have been privileged 
to occupy this pulpit only for a temporary and 
secular purpose, and to have encroached on the pre- 
rogative of its stated incumbent; but coming here, 
at your flattering call, to unite in the commemoration 
of those whose special distinction it was to have 
separated from the communion to which I rejoice 
to belong, I could not resist the impulse to give 
utterance to thoughts which are alwa3's uppermost 
in my mind, when I reflect on this period of New 
England history. I hasten now to resume and to 



68 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

finish the thread of that Pilgrim narrative which is 
the legitimate theme of my discourse. 

I must not detain you for a moment by the details 
of that perilous voyage across the Atlantic, with its 
" many fierce storms, with which the ship was 
badly shaken and her upper works made very leaky; 
and one of the mainbeams in the midships bowed 
and cracked." I must not detain you by dwelling 
on that " serious consultation " in mid-ocean about 
putting back, when "the great iron screw which 
the passengers brought out of Holland " was so 
providentially found " for the buckling of the main- 
beam," and " raising it into his place." All this is 
described in the journal of Bradford with a pathos 
and a power which could not be surpassed. 

I must not detain you either by attempting to 
portray, in any words of my own, their arrival, on the 
2ist of November, within the sheltering arm of 
yonder noble Cape, — "the coast fringed with ice — 
dreary forests, interspersed with sand}^ tracts, filling 
the back ground; "-—" no friendly light-houses, as 
yet, hanging out their cressets on your headlands; 
no brave pilot boat hovering like a sea-bird on the 
tops of the waves, to guide the shattered bark to its 
harbor;, no charts and soundings making the secret 
pathways of the deep plain as a gravelled road 
through a lawn." All this was depicted, at the 
great second-centennial celebration of the settle- 
ment of Barnstable, by my lamented friend Edward 



ORATION. 69 

Everett, with a grandeur of diction and imagery 
'which no living orator can approach. They seem 
still ringing in my ear from his own lips, — for I 
was by his side on that occasion, and no one who 
heard him on that day can ever forget his tones or 
his words, as, " with a spirit raised above mere 
natural agencies," he exclaimed, — " I see the moun- 
tains of New England rising from their rocky 
thrones. They rush forward into the ocean, settling 
down as they advance, and there they range them- 
selves, a mighty bulwark around the heaven-directed 
vessel. Yes, the everlasting God himself stretches 
out the arm of his mercy and his power in substan- 
tial manifestation, and gathers the meek company 
of his worshippers as in the hollow of his hand! " 

Nor will I detain you for a moment on the sim- 
ple but solemn covenant which the Pilgrim Fathers 
formed and signed in the cabin of the Mayflower on 
that same 2 ist of November, — the earliest " original 
compact " of self-government of which we have any 
authentic record in the annals of our race. That 
has had ample illustration on many other occasions, 
and has just been the subject of special commem- 
oration by the New England Historic-Genealogical 
Society in Boston. 

I turn at once to what concerns this day and this 
hour. I turn at once to that third exploring party 
which left the Mayflower — not quite blown up by 
the rashness of a mischievous boy, and still riding 



70 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

at anchor in Cape Cod harbor — on the i6th of 
December; and for whose wanderings in search of 
a final place of settlement our friend Dr. Dexter has 
supplied so precise a chronological table. I turn to 
those "ten of our men," with "two of our seamen," 
and with six of the ship's company, — eighteen in 
all, — in an open shallop, who, after spending a 
large part of two days "in getting clear of a sandy 
point, which lay within less than a furlong of the 
ship," — "the weather being very cold and hard," 
two of their number " very sick " and one of them 
almost " swooning with the cold," and the gunner 
for a day and a night seemingly " sick unto death," 
— found " smoother water and better sailing " on 
the 17th, but "so cold that the water froze on their 
clothes and made them many times like coats of 
iron;" who were startled at midnight by "a great 
and hideous cry," and after a fearful but triumphant 
" first encounter," early the next morning, with a 
band of Indians, who assailed them with savage 
yells and showers of arrows, and after a hardly less 
fearful encounter with a furious storm, which " split 
their mast in three pieces," and swept them so far 
upon the breakers that the cry was suddenly heard 
from the helmsman, " About with her, or else we are 
all cast away," found themselves at last, when the ~ 
darkness of midnight had almost overtaken them, 
"under the lee of a small island, and remained all that 
night in safety," " keeping their watch in the rain." 



ORATION. 71 

There they passed the 19th, exploring the island, 
and perhaps repairing their shattered mast. The 
record is brief but suggestive: "Here we made 
our rendezvous all that day, being Saturday." But 
briefer ^till, and how much more suggestive and 
significant, is the entry of the following day! — 

" 10. (20) of December, on the Sabboth day wee 
rested." 

I pause, — I pause for a moment, — at that most 
impressive record. Among all the marvellous con- 
cisenesses and tersenesses of a Thucydides or a Taci- 
tus, — condensing a whole chapter of philosophy, or 
the whole character of an individual or a people, into 
the compass of a motto, — I know of nothing terser 
or more condensed than this; nor any thing which 
develops and expands, as we ponder it, into a fuller 
or finer or more characteristic picture of those whom 
it describes. " On the Sabbath day we rested." It 
was no mere secular or physical rest. The day 
before had sufficed for that. But alone, upon a 
desert island, in the depths of a stormy winter; well- 
nigh without food, wholly without shelter; after a 
week of such experiences, such exposure and hard- 
ship and suffering, that the bare recital at this hour 
almost freezes our blood; without an idea that the 
morrow should be other or better than the day 
before; with every conceivable motive, on their own 
account, and on account of those whom they had 
left in the ship, to lose not an instant of time, but 



72 



PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 



to hasten and hurry forward to the completion of 
the work of exploration which they had undertaken, 
— they still "remembered the Sabbath day to keep 
it holy." " On the Sabbath day we rested." 

It does not require one to sympathize with the 
extreme Sabbatarian strictness of Pilgrim or Puri- 
tan, in order to be touched by the beauty of such 
a record and of such an example. I know of no 
monument on the face of the earth, ancient or 
modern, which would appeal more forcibly to the 
hearts of all who reverence an implicit and heroic 
obedience to the commandments of God, than would 
an unadorned stone on yonder Clark's island, with 
the simple inscription, "20 Dec. 1620 — On the 
Sabbath day we rested." There is none to which 
I would myself more eagerl}' contribute. But it 
should be paid for by the penny contributions of 
the Sabbath-school children of all denominations 
throughout the land, among whom that beautiful 
Jubilee Medal has just been distributed. 

And what added interest is given to that record, 
what added force to that example, by the immediate 
sequel ! The record of the very next day runs, — 
" On Monday we sounded the harbour and found it 
a very good harbour for our shipping; we marched 
also into the land, and found divers corn-fields and 
little running brooks, a place very good for situation; 
so we returned to our ship again with good news to 
the rest of our people, which did much comfort 
their hearts." 



ORATION. 73 

That was the day, my friends, which we are here 
to commemorate. On that Monday, the 21st of 
December, 1620, from a single shallop, those "ten 
of our men," with "two of our seamen," and with 
six of the ship's company, landed upon this shore. 
The names of almost all of them are given, and 
should not fail of audible mention on an occasion 
like this. Miles Standish heads the roll. John 
Carver comes second. Then follow William Brad- 
ford, Edward Winslow, John Tilley, Edward Tilley, 
John Rowland, Richard Warren, Steven Hopkins, 
and Edward Dotey. The " two of our seamen " 
were John Alderton and Thomas English; and the 
two of the ship's company whose names are recorded 
were Master Copin and Master Clarke, from the 
latter of whom the Sabbath island was called. 

They have landed. They have landed at last, 
after sixty-six days of weary and perilous naviga- 
tion since bidding a final farewell to the receding 
shores of their dear native country. They have 
landed at last; and when the sun of that day went 
down, after the briefest circuit of tfie year. New 
England had a place and a name — a permanent 
place, a never to be obliterated name — in the his- 
tory, as well as in the geography, of civilized 
Christian man. 

" They whom once the desert beach 
Pent within its bleak domain, — 
Soon their ample sway shall stretch 
O'er the plenty of the plain ! " 
10 



74 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

I will not say that the corner-stone of New 
England had quite yet been laid. But its sym- 
bol and perpetual synonyme had certainly been 
found. That one grand Rock, — even then with- 
out its fellow along the shore, and destined to be 
without its fellow on any shore throughout the 
world, — Nature had laid it, — The Architect of the 
Universe had laid it, — " when the morning stars sang 
together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy." 
There it had reposed, unseen of human eye, the 
storms and floods of centuries beating and breaking; 
upon it. There it had reposed, awaiting the slow- 
coming feet, which, guided and guarded by no mere 
human power, were now to make it famous for ever. 
The Pilgrims trod it, as it would seem, uncon- 
sciously, and left nothing but authentic tradition to 
identify it. " Their rock was not as our rock." Their 
thoughts at that hour were upon no stone of earthly 
mould. If they observed at all what was beneath 
their feet, it may indeed have helped them still 
more fervently to lift their eyes to Him who had 
been predicted and promised "as the shadow of a 
great rock in a weary land ; " and may have given 
renewed emphasis to the psalm which perchance 
they may have recalled, — " From the end of the 
earth will I cry unto thee, when my heart is over- 
whelmed: lead me to the rock that is higher than I." 
Their trust was only on the Rock of Ages. 

We have had many glowing descriptions and not 



ORATION. 75 

a few elaborate pictures of this day's doings; and it 
has sometimes been a matter of contention whether 
Mary Chilton or John Alden first leapt upon the 
shore, — a question which the late Judge Davis pro- 
posed td settle by humorously suggesting that the 
friends of John Alden should give place to the lady, 
as a matter of gallantry. But the Mayflower, with 
John Alden, and Mary Chilton, and all the rest of 
her sex, and all the children, was still in the harbor 
of Cape Cod. The aged Brewster, also, was on 
board the Mayflower with them; and sorel}^ needed 
must his presence and consolation have been, as 
poor Bradford returned to the ship, after a week's 
absence, to find that his wife had fallen overboard 
and was drowned the very day after his departure. 

I may not dwell on these or any other details, 
except to recall the fact that on Frida}^, the 25th, 
they weighed anchor, — it was Christmas Day, 
though they did not recognize it, as so many of us 
are just preparing to recognize it, as the brightest 
and best of all the days of the year; — that on Satur- 
day, the 26th, the Mayflower " came safely into a 
safe harbour; " and that on Monday, the 28th, the 
landing was completed. Not only was the time 
come and the place found, but the whole company 
of those who were for ever to be associated with that 
time and that place were gathered at last where we 
are now gathered to do homage to their memory. 

I make no apology, sons and daughters of New 



76 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

England, for having kept always in the foreground 
of the picture I have attempted to draw, the relig- 
ious aspects and incidents of the event we have 
come to commemorate. Whatever civil or political 
accompaniments or consequences that event may 
have had, it was in its rise and progress, in its incep- 
tion and completion, eminently and exclusively a 
religious movement. The Pilgrims left Scrooby as 
a church. They settled in Amsterdam and in 
Leyden as a church. They embarked in the May- 
flower as a church. They came to New England 
as a church; and Morton, at the close of the intro- 
duction to Bradford's History, as given by Dr. Young 
in his Chronicles, entitles it "The Church of Christ 
at Plymouth in New England, first begun in Old 
England, and carried on in Holland and Plymouth 
aforesaid." They had no license, indeed, from 
either Pope or Primate. It was a church not only 
without a bishop, but without even a pastor; with 
only a layman to lead their devotions and administer 
their discipline. A grand layman he was, — Elder 
Brewster: it would be well for the world if there 
were more laymen like him, at home and abroad. 
In yonder Bay, it is true, before setting foot on Cape 
Cod, they entered into a compact of civil govern- 
ment; but the reason expressly assigned for so doing 
was, that " some of the strangers amongst them 
(z. e., not Leyden men, but adventurers who joined 
them in England) had let fall in the ship that when 



ORATION. / / 

they came ashore they would use their own Hberty, 
for none had power to command them," or, as else- 
where stated, because they had observed " some not 
well affected to unity and concord, but gave some 
appearance of faction." They came as a Church : all 
else was incidental, the result of circumstances, a 
protection against outsiders. They came to secure 
a place to worship God according to the dictates of 
their own consciences, free from the molestations 
and persecutions which they had encountered in 
England; and free, too, from the uncongenial sur- 
roundings, the irregular habits of life, the strange 
and uncouth language, the licentiousness of youth, 
the manifold temptations, and " the neglect of obser- 
vation of the Lord's day as a Sabbath," which they 
had so lamented in Holland. 

We cannot be too often reminded that it was 
religion which effected the first permanent settle- 
ment in New England. All other motives had 
■ failed. Commerce, the fisheries, the hope of dis- 
covering mines, the ambition of founding Colonies, 
all had been tried, and all had failed. But the Pil- 
grims asked of God; and "He gave them the 
heathen for their inheritance, and the uttermost 
parts of the earth for their possession." Religious 
faith and fear, religious hope and trust, — the fear 
of God, the love of Christ, an assured faith in the 
Holy Scriptures, and an assured hope of a life of 
bliss and blessedness to come, — these, and these 



78 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

alone, proved sufficient to animate and strengthen 
them for the endurance of all the toils and trials 
which such an enterprise involved. Let it never 
be forgotten that if the corner-stone of New Eng- 
land was indeed laid by the Pilgrim Fathers, two 
centuries and a half ago to-day, it was in the cause 
of religion they laid it; and whatever others may 
have built upon it since, or may build upon it here- 
after, — "gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, 
stubble," — God forbid that on this Anniversary the 
foundation should be ignored or repudiated! 

As we look back ever so cursorily on the great 
procession of American History as it starts from yon- 
der Rock, and winds on and on and on to the present 
hour, we may descry many other scenes, many other 
actors, remote and recent, in other parts of the 
Union as well as in our own, of the highest interest 
and importance. There are Conant and Kndicott 
with their little rudimental plantations at Cape Ann 
and at Salem. There is the elder Winthrop, with 
the Massachusetts Charter, at Boston, of whom the 
latest and best of New England Historians (Dr. 
Palfrey) has said " that it was his policy, more than 
any other man's, that organized into shape, animated 
with practical vigor, and prepared for permanency, 
those primeval sentiments and institutions that have" 
directed the course of thought and action in New 
England in later times." There is the younger 
Winthrop, not far behind, v^nth the Charter of Con- 



ORATION. 79 

nectlcut, of whose separate Colonies Hooker and 
Haynes and Hopkins and Eaton and Dav^enport and 
Ludlow had laid the foundations. There is Rog-er 
Williams, the Apostle of soul freedom," as he has 
been called, with the Charter of Rhode Island. 
There is the brave and generous Stuyvesant of the 
New Netherlands. There are the Catholic Calverts, 
and the noble Quaker Penn, building up Maryland 
and Pennsylvania alike, upon principles of toleration 
and philanthropy. There is the benevolent and 
chivalrous Oglethorpe, assisted by Whitefieldand the 
sainted Wesleys, planting his Moravian Colony in 
Georgia. There is Franklin, with his first proposal of 
a Continental Union, and with his countless inven- 
tions in political as well as physical science. There 
is James Otis with his great argument against Writs 
of Assistance, and Samuel Adams with his inexor- 
able demand for the removal of the British regi- 
ments from Boston. There are Quincy with his 
grand remonstrance against the Port Bill, and War- 
ren, offering himself as the Proto-martyr on Bunker 
Hill. There is Jefferson with the Declaration of 
Independence fresh from his own pen, with John 
Adams close at his side, as its " Colossus on the 
floor of Congress." There are Hamilton and Madi- 
son and Jay bringing forward the Constitution in 
their united arms; and there, leaning on their 
shoulders, and on that Constitution, but towering 
above them all, is Washington, the consummate 



80 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

commander, the incomparable President, the world- 
honored Patriot. There are Marshall and Story as 
the expounders of the Constitution, and Webster as 
its defender. There is John Quinc}' Adams with 
his powerful and persistent plea for the sacred 
Right of Petition. There is Jackson with his Proc- 
lamation against Nullification. There is Lincoln 
with his ever memorable Proclamation of Emanci- 
pation. And there, closing for the moment that 
procession of the dead, — for I presume not to mar- 
shal the living, — is George Peabody, with his world- 
wide munificence and his countless benefactions. 
Other figures may present themselves to other eyes 
as that grand Panorama is unrolled. Other figures 
will come into view as that great procession ad- 
vances. But be it prolonged, as we pray God it may 
be, even " to the crack of doom," first and foremost, 
as it moves on and on in radiant files, — "searing 
the eyeballs " of oppressors and tyrants, but rejoic- 
ing the hearts of the lovers of freedom throughout 
the world, — will ever be seen and recognized the 
men whom we commemorate to-day, — the Pilgrim 
Fathers of New England. No herald announces 
their approach. No pomp or parade attends their 
advent. "Shielded and helmed and weapon'd with 
the truth," no visible guards are around them, 
either for honor or defence. Bravely but humbly, 
and almost unconsciously, they assume their peril- 
ous posts, as pioneers of an advance which is to 



ORATION. 81 

know no backward steps, until, throughout this 
Western hemisphere, it shall have prepared the 
way of the Lord and of liberty. They come with 
no charter of human inspiration. They come with 
nothing but the open Bible in their hands, leading a 
march of civilization and human freedom, which 
shall go on until time shall be no more, — if only 
that Bible shall remain open, and shall be accepted 
and reverenced, b}^ their descendants as it was by 
themselves, as the Word of God! 

It is a striking coincidence that while they were 
just taking the first steps in the movement which 
terminated at Plymouth Rock, that great clerical 
Commission was appointed by King James, which 
prepared what has everywhere been received as the 
standard English version of the Holy Scriptures; 
and which, though they continued to use the Geneva 
Bible themselves, has secured to their children and 
posterity a translation which is the choicest treasure 
of literature as well as of religion. Nor can I fail 
to remember, with the warmest interest, that, at this 
moment, while we are engaged in this Fifth Jubilee 
Commemoration, a similar Commission is employed, 
for the first time, in subjecting that translation to the 
most critical revision; — not with a view, certainly, 
to attempt any change or improvement of its incom- 
parable st3de and language, but only to purge the 
sacred volume from every human interpolation or 
error. 



82 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

No more beautiful scene has been witnessed in 
our day and generation, nor one more auspicious 
of that Christian unity which another world shall 
witness, if not this, than the scene presented in 
Westminster Abbey, in the exquisite chapel of 
Henry VII., by that Revision Commission, in imme- 
diate preparation for entering on their great task, on 
the morning of the 22d of June last; — "such a 
scene," as the accomplished Dean Alford has well 
said, " as has not been enacted since the name of 
Christ was first named in Britain." I can use no 
other words than his, in describing it: "Between 
the latticed shrine of King Henry VII. and the flat 
pavement tomb of Edward VI. was spread ^ Gud's 
board,' and round that pavement tomb knelt, shoul- 
der to shoulder, bishops and dignitaries of the 
Church of England, professors of her Universities, 
divines of the Scottish Presbyterian and Free 
Churches, and of the Independent, Baptist, Wes- 
leyan, Unitarian Churches in England, — a repre- 
sentative assembly, such as our Church has never 
before gathered under her wing, of the Catholic 
Church by her own definition, — of ' all who profess 
and call themselves Christians.' " It was a scene to 
give character to an age; and should the commis- 
sion produce no other valuable fruit, that opening 
Communion will make it memorable to the end of 
time. 

Yes, the open Bible was the one and all-sufficient 



ORATION. 83 

support and reliance of the Pilgrim Fathers. They 
looked, indeed, for other and greater reformations 
in religion than any which Luther or Calvin had 
accomplished or advocated; but they looked for 
them to come from a better understanding and a 
more careful study of the Holy Scriptures, and not 
from any vain-glorious human wisdom or scientific 
investigations. As their pastor Robinson said, in 
his farew^ell discourse, " He was confident the Lord 
had more truth and light yet to break forth out of 
his Holy Word." 

Let me not seem, my friends, to exaggerate the 
importance to our country of the event which we 
this day celebrate. The Pilgrims of the Mayflower 
did not establish the earliest permanent English set- 
tlement within the territories which now constitute 
our beloved country. I would b}^ no means over- 
look or disparage the prior settlement at Jamestown 
in Virginia. The Old Dominion, with all its direct 
and indirect associations with Sir Walter Raleigh, 
and with Shakspeare's accomplished patron and 
friend, the Earl of Southampton, — with Pocahon- 
tas, too, and Captain John Smith, — must always be 
remembered by the old Colony with the respect 
and afTection due to an elder sister. "I said an 
elder, not a better." Yet we may well envy some of 
her claims to distinction. More than ten years 
before an English foot had planted itself on the soil 
of New England, that Virginia Colony had eflected 



84 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

a settlement ; and more than a year before the 
landing of the Pilgrims, — on the 30th of July, 
1619, — the first Representative Legislative Assem- 
bly ever held within the limits of the United States 
was convened at Jamestown. That Assembly 
passed a significant Act against drunkenness; and 
an Act somewhat quaint in its terms and provis- 
ions, but whose influence might not be unwhole- 
some at this day, against "excessive apparel," — 
providing that every man should be assessed in 
the church for all public contributions, " if he be 
unmarried, according to his own apparel; if he 
be married, according to his own and his wife's, 
or either of their apparel." Such a statute would 
have been called puritanical, if it had emanated 
from a New England Legislature. It might even 
now, however, do something to diminish the di- 
mensions, and simplif}' the material, and abate the 
luxurious extravagance, of modern dress. But that 
first Jamestown Assembly passed another most 
noble Act, for the conversion of the Indians and 
the education of their children, which entitles Vir- 
ginia to claim pre-eminence, or certainly priority, 
in that great work of Christian philanthropy, for 
which our Fathers, with glorious John Eliot at their 
head, did so much, and for which their sons, alas^ 
have accomplished so little, — unless, perhaps, 
under the new and noble Indian policy of the last 
twelve months. The political organization of Vir- 



ORATION. 85 

ginia was almost mature, while that of New England 
was still in embr3'o. 

Again, I do not forget that the Pilgrims of the 
Maj'flower built up no great City or Commonwealth. 
Within the first three months after their landing, 
one-half of their number had fallen victims to the 
rigors of the climate and the hardships of their 
condition; and at the end of ten years the whole 
population of the Colony — men, women, and chil- 
dren — did not exceed three hundred. They were 
but as a voice in the desert; but it was a glorious 
voice, and one which was destined to reverberate 
around the world, and ring along the ages with 
still increasing emphasis. Other Colonies, by the 
inspiration and encouragement of their example, 
soon succeeded them, and did the substantial work 
for which they only prepared the wa}^; for which 
they, as they said themselves, were but " stepping- 
stones." The great " Suffolk Emigration " of 1630, 
— " The Governor and Company of the Massachu- 
setts Bay," — coming over in eleven ships, with the 
whole government and its Charter, were the main 
founders and builders of the grand old Common- 
wealth, of which the Plymouth Colony, sixty years 
afterwards, became an honored part. 

It is pleasant to remember how harmoniously 
and lovingly the two Colonies lived together. It is 
pleasant to remember that parting charge of John 
Cotton to the Massachusetts Company, at South- 



86 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

ampton, " that they should take advice of them at 
Plymouth, and do nothing to offend them-" I can- 
not forget, either, the cordial visit of Governor 
Bradford to Governor Winthrop in 1631; nor that 
Winthrop soon afterwards subjected himself to 
reproach for supplying the Pilgrims with powder, 
at his personal cost, in a moment of their urgent 
dano'er and distress. Still less can I forsfet that 
October da}^ in 1632, when Governor Winthrop 
returned Bradford's visit, coming a large part of 
the way here on foot, and crossing the river on the 
back of his guide; and when Bradford and Brews- 
ter and Roger Williams and Winthrop, with John 
Wilson, the first pastor of Boston, were together 
on this spot, engaging in religious discourse, 
and partaking of the Sacrament together. That 
most impressive and memorable Communion was 
at once the harbinger and the pledge, the predic- 
tion and the assurance, of the peace and harmony, 
the co-operation and concord, which were long 
to prevail between the infant Colonies of New 
England. 

True, there were some shades of difference in the 
religious sentiment and in the civil administration 
of the various plantations, as they were successively 
developed. The charges of intolerance, bigotry, 
superstition, and persecution, which there seems to 
have been a special delight, in some quarters, of late 
years, in arraying against our New England Fathers 



ORATION. 87 

and founders, apply without doubt more directly to 
other Colonies, than to that whose landing we this 
day commemorate. The Pilgrims in their narrow 
retreat of rock and sand were but little disturbed 
b}' " intruders and dissentients," — as my friend 
Dr. Ellis has so well classified them, — and could 
afford to be less rigid in their admissions and ex- 
clusions. Their leaders, too, were perhaps of a 
somewhat more lenient and liberal temper than 
those who settled elsewhere. Let them have all 
the honor which belongs to them; and let censure 
and condemnation fall wherever it is deserved ! 
I am not here to justify or excuse all the extrava- 
gances, superstitions, or persecutions of the Puritan 
Colonists. But still less am I here to pander to the 
prurient malignity of those who are never weary 
of prying into the petty faults and follies of our 
Fathers, and who seem to gloat and exult in holding 
them up to the ridicule and reproach of their chil- 
dren. As if those great hearts, whether of 1620 
or 1630, had fled into the wilderness to assert and 
vindicate a broad, abstract, unqualified doctrine of 
religious liberty, or even of religious toleration, to 
which they had afterwards proved recreant them- 
selves! As if the precarious circumstances of their 
condition — with savage foes watching to extirpate 
them, with famine ever staring them in the face, 
with disease and death menacing them in every 
shape and at every turn — did not constrain and 



88 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

compel them, in the earlier stages of their career, 
to adopt the principle of excluding from their 
community any and all who were bent upon intro- 
ducing contention and discord, and of enforcing 
among themselves something of that stern martial 
rule which belongs to a besieged camp! Why, 
even Roger Williams himself was forced to intro- 
duce a right of exclusion, or non-admission, into 
his original articles of settlement at Providence. 
We can never too often recall the lano'ua2:e of the 
late venerable Josiah Quincy, — the last man of our 
day and generation — I had almost said of any day 
and generation — to palliate real bigotry or wanton 
intolerance, — when he said, in his masterly Dis- 
course on the Second Centennial Anniversary of the 
Settlement of Boston in 1630 : " Had our early 
ancestors adopted the course we at this day are 
apt to deem so eas}^ and obvious, and placed their 
government on the basis of liberty for all sorts of 
consciences, it would have been, in that age, a 
certain introduction of anarchy. . . . The non- 
toleration which characterized our early ancestors, 
from whatever source it may have originated, had 
undoubtedly the effect they intended and wished. 
It excluded from influence, in their infant settle- 
ment, all the friends and adherents of the ancient 
monarchy and hierarchy; all who, from any mo- 
tive, ecclesiastical or civil, were disposed to disturb 
their peace or their churches. They considered it 



ORATION. 89 

a measure of ' self-defence.' And it is unquestion- 
able that it was chiefly instrumental in forming the 
homogeneous and exclusively republican character 
for which the people of New England have, in all 
times, been distinguished; and, above all, that it 
fixed irrevocably in the country that noble security 
for religious liberty, the independent system of 
Church Government." 

But whatever may have been the differences or 
disagreements of the first planters of Plymouth and 
Massachusetts Bay, of New Haven and of Con- 
necticut, at the outset, we all know that in the 
summer of 1643 these four original Colonies estab- 
lished that noble New England Confederation, — the 
model and prototype of the Confederation of 1778, 
which " blended the many-nationed whole in one," 
and carried the thirteen American Colonies through 
the War of Independence, — whose grand and 
comprehensive preamble is alone an ample reply 
to all who would magnify one Colony at the ex- 
pense of another: — 

" Whereas we all came into these parts of Amer- 
ica with one and the same end and aim, namely, to 
advance the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ and 
to enjoy the liberties of the Gospel in purity with 
peace: And whereas in our settling (by a wise 
providence of God) we are further dispersed upon 
the Seacoasts and Rivers than was at first intended, 
so that we cannot according to our desire with 



90 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

convenience communicate in one Government and 
Jurisdiction: And whereas we live encompassed 
with people of several Nations and strange lan- 
guages, which hereafter may prove injurious to us 
or our posterity: And forasmuch as the Natives 
have formerly committed sundry insolences and 
outrages upon several plantations of the English, 
and have of late combined themselves against us: 
And seeing by reason of those sad distractions in 
England which they have heard of, and by which 
they know we are hindered from that humble way 
of seeking advice, or reaping those comfortable 
fruits of protection which at other times we might 
well expect : We therefore do conceive it our 
bounden duty without delay to enter into a present 
Consociation amongst ourselves, for mutual help and 
strength in all our future concernments: That as in 
Nation and Religion so in other respects we be 
and continue One, according to the tenor and true 
meaning of the ensuing Articles: Wherefore it is 
fully agreed and concluded by and between the 
parties or Jurisdictions above-named, and they 
jointly and severally do by these presents agree 
and conclude, That they all be and henceforth be 
called by the name of The United Colonies of 
New England." 

The very next clause of this remarkable Ordi- 
nance provided as follows : " The said United 
Colonies for themselves and their posterities do 



ORATION. 91 

jointly and severally hereby enter into a firm and 
perpetual league of friendship and amity for offence 
and defence, mutual advice and succour, upon all 
just occasions both for preserving and propagating 
the truth and liberties of the Gospel and for their 
own mutual safety and welfare." And another 
article provided for intrusting the whole manage- 
ment of the Confederation to two Commissioners 
from each of the four Jurisdictions, carefully add- 
ing, " all in Church fellowship with us," — thus 
leaving no shadow of doubt upon the point that it 
was a " Consociation " for religious as well as for 
political peace and unity. 

Accordingly we find among the proceedings of the 
Commissioners at New Haven in 1646 — a meeting 
at which neither Bradford nor Winslow nor either of 
the Winthrops was present, but at which all of the 
four Colonies were fully represented, and to whose 
proceedings all of them ultimately subscribed — 
that most memorable Declaration as to the " Spread- 
ing nature of Error and the dangerous growth and 
effects thereof," " under a deceitful colour of liberty 
of conscience," which recommended, among other 
things, that " Anabaptism, Familism, Antinomian- 
ism, and generally all errours of a like nature," "be 
seasonably and duly suppressed; " and which con- 
cluded with that glowing prediction for New Eng- 
land: " If thus we be for God, he will certainly 
be with us; and though the God of the world (as 



92 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

he is styled) be worshipped, and by usurpation set 
upon his throne in the main and greatest part of 
America, yet this small part and portion may be 
vindicated as by the right hand of Jehovah, and 
justly called Emmanuel's land." 

I do not forget that, in reference to the clause 
recommending the suppression of errors, the Plym- 
outh Commissioners " desired further considera- 
tion;" but the whole Declaration is entered upon 
the Plymouth Records as agreed upon, and was 
ultimately subscribed alike by the Commissioners 
of all the Colonies. 

I do not forget, either, that all New England was 
not included in that Confederation. All that there 
was of New Hampshire was indeed within the 
jurisdiction of Massachusetts. But we miss Rhode 
Island from the historic group. We miss Clarke 
and Coddington and Roger Williams from the roll 
of the Commissioners. It must be borne in mind, 
however, that it was not because the Plantations 
at Providence and the Islands were opposed to the 
Confederation or any of its articles, that they were 
not members of it. Both of them desired and 
solicited admission. " There was yet another, a 
fifth New England Colony (said John Quincy 
Adams in 1843), denied admission into the Union, 
and furnishing, in its broadest latitude, the demon- 
stration of that conscientious, contentious spirit, 
which so signally characterized the English Puri- 



ORATION. 93 

tans of the seventeenth century, the founders of 
New England, of all the liberties of the British 
Nation, and of the ultimate universal freedom of 
the race of man. The founder of the Colony of 
Rhode Island (adds he) was Roger Williams, a 
man who may be considered the very impersona- 
tion of this combined conscientious, contentious 
spirit." 

Rhode Island may vv^ell afford to bear w^ith equa- 
nimity any charges against the early contentiousness 
of her founders, in view of the glory which that 
very contentiousness has acquired for her on the 
page of history. " Roger Williams (says Bancroft) 
was the first person in modern Christendom to 
assert in its plenitude the doctrine of the liberty of 
conscience, the equality of opinions before the law; 
and in its defence he was the harbinger of Milton, 
the precursor and superior of Jeremy Taylor." 
The man upon whose tombstone such an inscrip- 
tion, — even with some allowances for rhetorical 
exaggeration, — may be justly written, need fear no 
strictures to which other peculiarities of character 
or conduct may subject him. I have an hereditary 
disposition, too, to be not only just but tender 
towards his memory, for Williams and the Win- 
throps of old, in spite of all differences, were most 
loving friends from first to last. I would palliate 
not a particle of the persecution or cruelty which 
he suffered; from whatever source it may have 



94 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

proceeded, or by whomever it may have been 
prompted. There w^as an heroic grandeur in his 
endurance and fortitude; there v^^as an unsparing 
self-devotion in his care for the Indians; there was 
a simplicity, sincerity, and earnestness in his whole 
career and character, — which must ever command 
our warmest sympathy and admiration. 

But it would be gross injustice to our other New 
England Fathers, and especiall}^ to our Massa- 
chusetts Fathers, not to admit that the conduct of 
Williams, in some of its earlier manifestations, 
was too precipitate and turbulent to be compatible 
with the peace and safety of the infant Colonies, — 
denying, as Winslow says he did, the lawfulness 
of a public oath, refusing " to allow the colors of 
our nation," and holding forth the unlawfulness of 
the patent from the king; — while the condition 
and temper of the plantations of Rhode Island — 
a State which we now so honor and love, and to 
which we owe more than one of our most valued 
citizens — were such, at that time, as to cause even 
the Plymouth rulers and elders to say: "Concerning 
the Islanders, we have no conversing with them, 
nor desire to have, further than necessity or hu- 
manity may require." 

But with the exception of these Rhode Island 
Plantations, which were still very small and scat- 
tered. New England was then one; one, not only 
as the multiplied States of our American Union 



ORATION. 95 

are one at this day, for civil, political, and military 
purposes; but one, also, in a unity to which our 
Federal Constitution presents no counterpart; — 
one for the preservation and propagation of Relig- 
ion; a Union for the defence and diffusion of pure, 
Protestant Christianity, such as the world had 
hardly ever witnessed before, and may hardly ever 
witness again. It was a grand Experiment, con- 
ceived and instituted for the glory of God and 
the welfare of man's estate. But a hig^her than 
human power had long ago emphatically declared, 
"My Kingdom is not of this world;" and the re- 
sult gave abundant evidence that, on this Continent 
at least, the Temporal and Spiritual power were 
not destined to be wielded successfully by the 
same hands. Church and State were never meant 
to thrive together on American soil. It remains 
to be seen how long they are to thrive together 
anywhere. 

I hasten to the conclusion of this discourse. I 
may not attempt to pursue the thread of Pilgrim 
history further on this occasion. We all know 
what New England has been doing since the days 
of that Confederation. We all know how her sons 
and her daughters, besides founding and building 
up noble institutions within her own limits, have 
sought homes in other parts of the country, near 
and remote, and how powerfully their influence 
and enterprise have everywhere been felt. It 



96 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

may safely be said that there is hardly a State, or 
county, or town, or village, on the Continent, in 
which New England men and women are not 
turning their faces towards Plymouth Rock to- 
day with something of the affectionate yearning 
of children towards an ancestral, or even a parental, 
home. We all know what contributions they have 
made to the cause of Education, of Learning, of 
Literature, of Science, and of Art. We all know 
what they have done for Commerce on the ocean, 
and for Industry on the land, vexing every sea with 
their keels, and startling every waterfall with their 
looms. We all know what examples of Patriotism 
and Statesmanship they have exhibited in every 
hour of Colonial or National trial. We do not fail 
to remember that New England led the march to 
Independence at Lexington and Concord and 
Bunker Hill, and that the bones of her sons were 
mingled with almost every soil on which the bat- 
tles of the Revolution were fought. Still less can 
we forget with what alacrit}^ and heroic self-sacri- 
fice her bravest and best rushed forth, — so many 
of them, alas! never to return, — for the defence 
of the Union, in the great struggle which has so 
recently terminated. 

But we are not here to-day to boast of our own 
exploits, or to deal with the events of our own day. 
It becomes us rather to remember our own short- 
comings and our own unworthiness, in view of the 



ORATION. 



97 



sublime examples of piety, endurance, and heroic 
valor which were exhibited by those "holy and 
humble men of heart" by whom ou. Colonies were 
planted. We sometimes assume to sit in judgment 
upon their doings. We often criticise their faults 
and failings. There is a special proneness of late 
years to deride their superstitions and denounce 
their intolerance. And certainly we may well 
rejoice that the days of religious bigotry and pro- 
scription are over in our land. But is it not even 
more true at this hour, than when no less liberal a 
Christian than John Quincy Adams uttered the 
warning, thirty years ago, that the intensely religious 
feelings and prejudices of our infancy have not only 
given way to universal toleration, but - to a liberality 
of doctrine bordering upon the extreme of a falter- 
mg faith"? God forbid that our own religious 
freedom should ever be described as Gibbon 
described that of the age of Antoninus, from which 
he dates the decline and fall of the Roman Empire: 
"The various modes of worship (says he) which 
prevailed in the Roman world were all considered 
by the people as equally true; by the philosophers 
as equally false; and by the magistrates as equally 
useful. And thus toleration produced not only 
mutual indulgence, but even religious concord." 
Suchaspiritof toleration, — such religious liberty 
as that, — even in an age of Paganism, gradually led 
to the overthrow of the great Empire of the Old 



13 



98 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

World. What else but overthrow can it accom- 
plish in a Christian age for the great Republic of the 
New World? 

May it not be wise and well for us all sometimes 
to reflect — and may I not be pardoned for con- 
cluding this discourse by summoning the sons and 
daughters of New England, here and everywhere, 
to reflect this day — what judgment would be pro- 
nounced upon us by our Pilgrim and our Puritan 
Fathers, could they be permitted to behold and to 
comprehend the grand expansion and development 
which we now witness of the institutions which 
they planted ? Could they descend among us, at this 
moment, in bodily presence, and with organs capa- 
ble of embracing at a glance a full perception and 
understanding of every thing which has been accom- 
plished on this wide-spread continent, since they 
were withdrawn from these earthly scenes and 
entered into their rest, — what would they think, 
what would they say? 

It is not difficult to imagine the surprise with 
which they would contemplate the existing condition 
of New England, and of the mighty nation of which 
it forms a part. It is not difficult to imagine the 
astonishment with which they would regard the 
great inventions and improvements of modern 
times. It is not difficult to imagine the eager and 
incredulous amazement with which Miles Standish, 
for instance, would listen to the click of a little 



' ORATION. 99 

machine, almost at his own old doorway, which 
could supply him daily and hourly with the latest 
phases of the big wars in Europe, which in his life- 
time he could only have studied in bulletins, or 
broadsides, or " books of the news," not much less 
than half a year old. It is not difficult to conceive 
the wonder of Edward Winslow, as he should see, 
or be told of, some noble ship traversing the wide 
Atlantic, from Land's End to Cape Cod, with 
undeviating regularity, without sails and against the 
wind, in far less time than he could have relied on 
crossing from one little island to another of the 
Caribbean Sea, before he sunk so sadly beneath its 
waters. It is not difficult to picture the bewilder- 
ment of Brewster and Bradford as they should listen 
to the rattling and whistling and thundering, by day 
and by night, of cars bringing more passengers than 
the whole population of Plymouth in their day, and 
more freijjht than would have sustained that whole 
population for a winter, not merely from Boston in 
not much more than an hour, but from the shores of 
the Pacific Ocean in not much more than a week! 
It is easy to conceive the consternation of them all, 
could they see this whole assembly, by an almost 
instantaneous flash of sunlight, grouped and pictured 
with an exactness which the most protracted labors 
of ancient or modern art could never have reached. 
It is easy to conceive their rapture should they wit- 
ness the intensest physical agonies of the human 

LofC. 



100 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

frame charmed to sleep by the inhalation of the 
vapor of a few drops of ether. It is easy to under- 
stand how astounded they would be, not merely at 
learning that all those phenomena of the celestial 
bodies which had so often perplexed and alarmed 
them were now familiar to every school-boy; but 
at being specially informed that to-morrow there 
should be a great eclipse of the sun, total in some 
parts of the w^orld though hardly visible here; and 
that Science, not satisfied with calculating, by the 
old processes of which they may have heard some- 
thing before, the precise instants of its beginning 
and end, had equipped and sent out formal expedi- 
tions to many distant lands to observe and record 
all its phases and incidents! 

We can readily suppose that such marvels as 
these would not be taken in by them without 
reawakening something of their old superstitious 
fear and awe; and we might expect to hear from 
their lips some exclamations, if not about " the old 
Serpent," certainly about " wonders and more won- 
ders of the invisible world." But we need not resort 
to these miracles of science and art in order to illus- 
trate the surprise and amazement with which our 
Fathers would contemplate the condition of their 
posterity. The mere extent, population, and power 
of our country, its great States, its magnificent 
cities, its vast wealth, its commerce, its crops, its 
industr}^ its education, its freedom, — no longer a 



" ORATION, 101 

slave upon its soil, — all, all of all races, equal 
before the law, — what else could they desire to 
fill up the measure of our development, or of their 
own delight! What more could they possibly wish 
to complete and crown the vision of glory vouch- 
safed to them? 

Oh, my friends, have you forgotten, or can you 
imagine that they would forget for an instant, the 
cause in which they came here? Can you believe 
that they would be so dazzled and blinded by the 
glare of mere temporal success and material pros- 
perity, or by the grandeur of intellectual triumphs 
and scientific discoveries and philosophical achieve- 
ments, as to lose sight and thought of that which 
animated — and, I had almost said, constituted — 
their whole mortal existence? Can we not hear 
them inquiring eagerly and earnestly, as they gaze 
upon all around them, " Is the moral welfare of the 
country keeping pace with its material progress? 
Has religion maintained the place we assigned it, 
as the corner-stone of all your institutions? Is the 
Bible, the open Bible, which we brought over in 
our hands, still reverenced of you all as the Word 
of God? Is the Lord's Day still respected and 
observed as a da}^ of religious rest, as we observed 
it on that desolate island before our feet had stept 
upon yonder consecrated rock? Are your houses 
of worship proportionate to your population? Are 
there worshippers enough, Sunday by Sunday, to 



102 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

fill the houses which you have? Are there no 
temples of false prophets — no organized communi- 
ties of licentiousness, under the color of religion — 
in your land ? Are there none among you who 
' seek unto them that have familiar spirits and unto 
wizards that peep and that mutter, — for the living- 
to the dead'? Are you doing your full part in 
carrying the Gospel to the heathen? Or are you 
waiting until the heathen shall have come over into 
your inheritance, bringing their idols with them, to 
cheapen labor and to dilute your own civilization 
and Christianity? Are your schools and colleges 
still dedicated, as we dedicated at least one of 
them, ^ to Christ and the Church'? Is there no 
fear that your science has been emboldened by its 
triumphant successes to overleap the bounds of 
legitimate investigation, putting Nature to the rack 
to wring from her, if it were possible, some denial, 
or some doubt, of that great Original, whom she 
has always rejoiced, and still rejoices, to pro- 
claim ? Is there no fear that your philosophy has 
been tempted to transcend the just ^ limits of relig- 
ious thought,' and to set up some material theory, 
or some self-styled positive system, which may se- 
duce the deluded soul from its hope of immortality, 
and w^eaken, if not destroy, its sense of the need 
of a Saviour? Is there no fear that a sentimental, 
sensational, licentious literature is corrupting the 
tastes and sapping the morals of your children, 



ORATION. 103 

and rendering the universal appetite for reading 
an almost doubtful blessing? Are your charities, 
public and private, numerous and noble as they 
are, altogether commensurate with your wealth? 
Or is the larger half of your surplus incomes ab- 
sorbed in a cankering and debasing luxury, de- 
structive alike to the physical, intellectual, and 
spiritual energy of all who indulge in it? Are 
integrity and virtue enthroned in 3^our hearts and 
homes? Have they a recognized and undisputed 
sovereignty in the market-place and on the ex- 
change? Or are vice and crime making not a few 
days dark, and not a few nights hideous, in your 
crowded cities? Is there purity and principle and 
honor in your public servants? Or are corruption 
and intrigue and fraud threatening to make havoc 
of your free institutions, rendering all things venal, 
and almost all things, except mere party disloyalty, 
venial, in your State and National Capitals ? " 

Such questions as these, I am conscious, if com- 
ing from any living lips, or, certainly, from any 
living layman's lips, might be jeered at as savoring 
of sanctimoniousness and fanaticism. I do not pre- 
sume to ask them for myself; much less would I 
presume to answer them. Make what allowance 
you please for the rigid austerity and excessive 
scrupulousness of those for whom I am only an 
interpreter. But does any one deny or doubt that 
they are the very questions which would be asked 



104 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

first, and most eagerly and most emphatically, by 
those whom we this day commemorate, and by 
those who were associated with them in founding 
and building up New England? 

Can we not hear them, at this moment, solemnly 
warning us, lest, in the pride of our prosperity and 
greatness, " when our silver and our gold is mul- 
tiplied, and all that we have is multiplied," our 
hearts be lifted up to say, each for himself, " My 
power and the might of mine hand hath gotten 
me this wealth," while the great lesson of our 
stewardship, to Him to whom we owe it all, is 
forgotten or neglected? 

Can we not hear them, at this moment, solemnly 
warning us, lest, in the pride of our freedom and 
independence, we forget that " the liberty we are 
to stand for, with the hazard not only of our 
goods, but of our lives if need be," is " a liberty 
for that only which is good, just, and honest," and 
not a liberty to be used as a cloak of malicious- 
ness and licentiousness? 

Can we not hear them, at this moment, from 
yonder hill of graves, solemnly and atfectionately 
warning us lest, in the pride of our science, while a 
thousand telescopes and spectroscopes are ready to 
be levelled, on the morrow, at the orb of day, — 
to reveal its chromosphere and its photosphere, to 
measure its tornadoes, to detect the exact nature of 
its corona, and to mark the precise instants of its 



ORATION. 105 

partial or total obscuration, — the Sun of Righteous- 
ness, all unobserved, be dimmed and darkened in 
our own hearts, and an Eclipse of Faith be suffered 
to steal and settle over our land, v^^hose beginning 
may be imperceptible, and its end beyond calcula- 
tion ? 

Oh, let us hear and heed these w^arnings of the 
fathers to the children, as they come to us to-day, 
enforced not only by all the precious memories of 
their faith and piety, their virtues and sacrifices and 
sufferings, but by all the lessons and experiences 
of the times in which we live! We need not look 
beyond the events of the single year which is just 
closing, — this Annus Miradilis, compared with 
which that of Dryden and Defoe was without sig- 
nificance or consequence; a year, more marvellous 
in its manifestations than almost any which has pre- 
ceded it since the great year of our Lord, and from 
whose calendar no form of physical, political, or 
religious convulsion seems to have been wanting 
to startle and confound the nations; a 3^ear, whose 
Christmas, alas! is clouded and saddened by the 
continuance, in a land bound lo us by memories 
not yet obliterated, of a conflict and a carnage 
which must fill every Christian heart with horror, 
and for the termination of which we would de- 
voutly invoke the only Intervention which has not 

14 



106 PILGRIM A^'^^^ERSARY. 

been, and which cannot be, rejected; — we need not, 
I say, look beyond the events of this single jubilee 
year of the Landing, to find evidence of the vanity 
of all human ambition and the impotence of all 
human power, and to see renewed and startling 
proof that while 

"A thousand years scarce serve to form a State, 
An hour may lay it in the dust." 

Let us not be deaf to the warnings of the Fathers. 
Let us not be insensible to the lessons of the hour. 
Let us resolve that no National growth or grandeur, 
no civil freedom or social prosperity or individual 
success, shall ever render us unmindful of those 
great principles of piety and virtue which the 
Pilgrims inculcated and exemplified. Let us 
resolve that whatever else this nation shall be, or 
shall fail to be, it shall still and always be a Christian 
Nation, in the full comprehensiveness and true sig- 
nificance of that glorious term, — its example ever 
on the side of Peace and Justice; its eagle, not 
only with the shield of Union and Liberty em- 
blazoned on its breast, but, like that of many 
a lectern of ancient cathedral or modern church, 
abroad or at home, ever proudly bearing up the 
open Bible on its outspread wings! And then, as 
year after year shall roll over our land, as jubilee 
shall succeed jubilee, and our children and our 



ORATION. 107 

children's children shall gather on this consecrated 
spot to celebrate the event which has brought us 
here to-day, those grand closing words of Webster 
fifty years ago — the only words worthy to sum up 
the emotions of an hour like this, and send them 
down all sparkling and blazing to the remotest 
posterity, — shall be repeated and repeated by 
those who shall successively stand where he then 
stood, and where I stand now, not with any feeble 
expectation or faltering hope only, but with that firm 
persuasion, that undoubting confidence, that assured 
trust and faith, with which I adopt and repeat 
them as the closing words of another Jubilee dis- 
course : — 

" Advance, then, ye future generations ! We 
would hail you, as you rise in your long succession 
to fill the places which we now fill, and to taste 
the blessings of existence where we are passing, 
and soon shall have passed, our own human dura- 
tion. We bid you welcome to this pleasant land of 
the Fathers. We bid you welcome to the healthful 
skies and the verdant fields of New England. We 
greet your accession to the great inheritance which 
we have enjoyed. We welcome you to the bless- 
ings of good government and religious liberty. We 
welcome you to the treasures of science and the 
delights of learning. We welcome vou to the 
transcendent sweets of domestic life, to the happi- 



108 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

ness of kindred and parents and children. We 
welcome you to the immeasurable blessings of 
rational existence, the immortal hope of Christianity, 
and the light of everlasting truth! " 



NOTE. 

(Page 57.) 

The following inscription in the Hall of the Bishop of London's 
Palace, at Fiilham, was copied for me most kindly by my vener- 
able friend Bishop McIlvaine, of Ohio : — 

" This Hall, with the adjoining quadrangle, was erected by Bishop 
Fitzjames in the reign of Henry VII. on the site of buildings of the old 
Palace as ancient as the Conquest. It was used as the Hall by Bishop 
Bonner and Bishop Ridley, during the struggles of the Reformation, 
and retained its original proportions till it was altered by Bishop Sher- 
lock in the reign of George II. Bishop Howley, in the reign of 
George IV., changed it into a private unconsecrated Chapel. It is now 
restored to its original purpose on the erection by Bishop Tait of a 
new Chapel of more suitable dimensions. 
"A. D. 1866." 

The Palace must have been occupied by Richard Bancroft, 
during whose intolerant policy the Pilgrims fled to Holland ; as 
he was Bishop of Loudon for some years before becoming Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury. It must, also, have been occupied by 
Laud, from whose intolerance the Puritans suffered ; as he, after 
serving as Bishop of St. David's, and of Bath and Wells, was 
translated to London in 1G28, and continued in that See, exer- 
cising great influence over the ecclesiastical atfairs of the realm, 
until he succeeded the more liberal Abbot as Primate of all 
England. 



PRAYER. 109 

VI. 

PRAYER. 

By Rev. Joskph P. Thompson, D.D., of New York. 

'T^HINE, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, and the 
glory, and the victory, and the majesty ; for all that is 
in the heaven and in the earth is Thine. Thine is the king- 
dom, O Lord ; and Thou art exalted as Head 'above all. 
Both riches and honor come of Thee ; and in Thy hand it 
is to hiake great, and to give strength unto all. To Thee 
would we ascribe all praise and dominion, woi'ld without end. 

We bless Thee that Thou hast given to Thy Son the 
kingdom upon earth ; the kingdom of truth and holiness, of 
rio'hteousness and m-dce ; the kinsrdom of redeemed and sancti- 
fied souls, wliich shall outlast all the kingdoms of the world, 
and against which the gates of hell shall not prevail ; — that 
Thou hast preserved Thy Church through conflicts with the 
powers of evil, through perils of persecution, and the more 
grievous perils of corruption and apostasy ; that, in every 
age, Thou hast raised up faithful witnesses to Thy truth, the 
noble army of martyrs and confessors, who continually do 
praise Thee. 

More especially do we this day bless Thee, the God of our 
Fathers, that when Reformation itself had need to be 
reformed, and Thy Church to be delivered from the powers 
of this world and the remnants of superstition. Thou didst 
search out by Thy Spirit the elect of Thine own kingdom, 
and didst call them to come out and be separate as the sons 
and daughters pf the Lord Almighty ; that they heai'd and 
obeyed Thy voice, and, trusting alone in Christ their Saviour 
and their Lord, committed their cause unto Him, in honoring 
His word and doing His will. For their faith and patience, 
their fidelity and devotion, their godly conversation, their 



110 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

loving care for their posterity, their great hope antl inward 
zeal for the advancement of the gospel of the kingdom of 
Christ in these remote parts of the world, we render thanks 
to Thee, through Jesus Christ our Lord. 

We bless Thee that Thou didst srive unto them courage 
answerable to the great and honorable actions to which Thv 
providence did call them ; — to fulfil all the Lord's ways, 
made known, or to be made known unto them, according to 
their best endeavors, whatever it might cost them, the Lord 
helping them. And we praise Thee that Thou didst help 
them to suffer all things for Christ's sake and the gospel's ; 
to endure bonds and stripes and imprisonment, the spoiling of 
their goods, the loss of home, the privations of exile, the 
pains of death. O Thou great Head of the Church, who in 
Thine earthly ministry of love didst endure such contradic- 
tion of sinners against Thyself, we bless Thee that Thou 
didst strengthen these Thy servants with Thine own strength, 
and comfort them with Thy grace. 

O Thou who leadest Joseph like a flock, whose way is in 
the sea, and Thy path in the great waters, we bless Thee that 
Thou didst guide our Fathers across the sea to these shores, 
didst here establish them in peace and safety, and through 
them establish thy Gospel in its simplicity, thy Church in its 
purity, and a Christian people, great and prosperous, as we 
are before Thee at this day. 

Now therefore, O Lord, we beseech Thee, have respect 
unto Thy covenant, and incline our hearts to walk in the 
ways of our Fathers, as they followed Christ their Redeemer. 
Thou hast set in order before us our sins by the contrast of 
their godly lives ; and we acknowledge our shortcomings, 
and confess with sliame our unfaithfulness to Thy mercies, 
and to the goodly and blessed heritage unto which we have 
succeeded. O Lord, have mercy upon us still, and for 
Christ's sake pardon our iniquities ; and grant, we beseech 



PRAYER. Ill 

Thee, that in this hour of" hallowed and grateful memories, 
beneath these favoring skies, amid the tender and sacred 
associations of this scene, we may make it our purpose, by 
Thy grace, to serve Thee as our Fathers served Thee ; to 
honor Thy Sabbath as they honored it ; to obey Thy word 
as they obeyed it ; to be ever true and firm for the right ; to 
seek the glory of Thy Kingdom ; and, like them, to set Christ 
above all, being rooted and grounded in Him as our life and 
salvation. 

Almighty God who keepest covenant and mercy for them 
that love Thee, we bless Thee that Thy goodness to our 
Fathers hath been continued to their children from greneration 
to generation ; that Thou didst preserve our infant colonies, 
and bind them together in a union of States ; didst carry 
them through tlie storm of war, and set them on high among 
the nations ; and in our own time, when all that we as a 
People had received was brought into peril of destruction, 
Thou didst revive the spirit of the Pilgrims and their faith 
and hope in Thee, and inspire our sons and brothers to a 
like courage and sacrifice for the saving of the Nation. To 
Thy name, O Lord, be the glory, that freedom, order, and 
union are now established from sea to sea ; that the land 
which in the beginning was a refuge from oppression no 
longer harbors oppression within its borders ; and we pray 
Thee that the peoples gathered here from every land may be 
fused and moulded into one Brotherhood, dwelling in peace, 
seeking one another's good, and acknowledging one God and 
Father over all. 

Bless all who are in authority : the Governor and Legis- 
lature of this Commonwealth, and all judges and magistrates ; 
Thy servant the President of the United States, his coun- 
sellors, the Congress of the Nation, the Army and Navy, and 
all who are in places of power and trust throughout the 
land. Give unto them, we beseech Thee, wise counsels, and 



112 PILGRIM A^NIVERSARY. 

the spirit of justice and peace. Bless all schools of learning ; 
and grant, we humbly ])ray Thee, that these may ever be 
consecrated as at the first to Christ and His Church, 

We supplicate Thy favor upon this ancient Church and 
town, praying that the faith and spirit of the Fathers may 
here abide in their cliildren. Bless Thy holy Church uni- 
versal, and fill her with Thy light and love. O Lord, save 
Thy people, and bless Thine heritage ; govern them and lift 
them up for ever. 

Thou Prince of Peace, who art Head over all thinofs to 
Thy Church, we beseech Thee hasten the return of peace 
among the nations ; and from all the commotions and terrors 
of this present time bring forth anew the beauty and order of 
Thy kingdom. Have compassion, O Lord, upon the wounded 
and dying, the sick and the prisoner, and upon all whose 
hearts and homes are made desolate by war ; and bring on 
the blessed day when the nations shall learn war no more. 
So, through the ages to come, may the truths and the actions 
which we have in remembrance this day exert their power 
for the recovery of mankind unto that true life and liberty 
which are in Jesus Christ our Lord. Keep us, O LoiiD, ever 
mindful of the lessons of this day. May we carry them with 
us to our homes ; may we teach them to our children ; may 
we preserve them as a guide and help in all our pilgrimage, 
till by Thy grace we too shall come unto the spirits of just 
men made perfect, to the general assembly and Church of 
the first-born in the Jerusalem that is above ; through Jesus 
Christ our Lord. 

Our Father which art in heaven. Hallowed be Thy name. 
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in 
heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our 
trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us. And 
lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For 
Thine is the Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory, for 
ever. Amen. 



SERVICES IN THE CHURCH. 113 

VII. 

HYMN. 

Composed by William Cullen Bryant, of New York ; read by Rev. 
T. E. St. John, of Worcester; and sung by the Choir to the 
tune of " Old Hundred," with Orchestral Accompaniment. 

Wild was the day, the wintry sea 

Moaned sadly on New England's strand. 
When first, the thoughtful and the free, 

Our Fathers trod the desert land. 

They little thought how pure a light, 

With years, should gather round that day ! 

How love should keep their memories bright ! 
How wide a realm their sons should sway ! 

Green are their bays ; and greener still 

Shall round their spreading fame be wreathed ; 

And regions now untrod shall thrill 

With reverence when their names are breathed ; 

Till where the sun, with softer fires, 

Looks on the vast Pacific's sleep. 
The children of the Pilgrim sires 

This hallow'd day like us shall keep. 

VIII. 

BENEDICTION. 

By Rev. Frederic N. Knapp. 

" May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God our 
Father, and the fellowship of His Holy Spirit, be and abide with you 
now and for ever. Amen.'''' 

IX. 

VOLUNTARY. 

Selections from " II Trovatore," by Gilmore's Band. 



15 



THE DINNER. 



A T the conclusion of the exercises in the church the pro- 
cession at once re-formed, and marched to the railway- 
station, where the dinner took place. The station-honse had 
been closed in, the tracks floored over, the hall thoroughly 
heated and neatly decorated, and every preparation made for 
lighting it. Plates were laid for nine hundred persons, and 
every seat was occupied. Ladies to the number of about 
three hundred had been admitted, in accordance with the 
plans of the Committee, and were seated at the tables when 
the procession arrived. At the centre of the guests' table 
three ancient chairs were placed, all of which were brought 
over in the " Mayflower," and were owned by Governor 
Carver and Elder Brewster and Governor Bradford. The 
first two belong to the Pilgrim Society, and the last to 
Nathaniel Russell, Esq., of Plymouth. These were 
occupied by the Presiding Ofiicer, the Orator of the Day, 
and the President of the Society. The tables were arranged 
with care and taste, and loaded with well-selected, well- 
cooked, and well-served viands, reflecting much credit on 
Mr. Field, the caterer, who performed the service required 
of him under his contract in a manner entirely satisfactory 
to the Committee.^ Five kernels of parched corn were 
placed at each plate, to illustrate the extremity to which tlie 
Pilsrims were at one time reduced." 



116 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

At about half-past three o'clock all were seated, when 
Hon. William T. Davis, of Plymouth, rose and said, — 

At the request of the Hon. Edward S. Tobey, President 
of the Pilgrim Society, who will be unable to remain during 
the dinner, I, as Vice-President of the Society and Chair- 
man of the Committee of Arrangements, take the chair, and 
shall preside over this festival. 

You will now listen to a blessings from the Rev. Henry 
M. Dexter, D.D., of Boston. 

PRAYER BY REV. DR. DEXTER. 

Almighty God, who didst give our Fathers grace to thank Thee 
for the treasures hid in the sand, and by their faith and with un- 
conquerable will to serve Thee in their narrow circumstances, grant 
unto us, their children, we beseech Thee, grace to thank Thee for 
Thy goodness to us, through them, and for Thy goodness to us in all 
things ; and help us to so use our advantages and privileges in Thy 
service, that we may be accepted of Thee, as they were ; for Christ's 
sake. Amen. 

A pleasant hour was spent in relieving the tables of their 
load, at the expiration of which the President called the 
company to order, and addressed them as follows : — 

SPEECH OF HON. WILLIAM T. DAVIS. 

Sons and Daughters of the Pilgrims ! — Why are you gathered 
here to-day ? What has brought you from your homes, under a 
winter sky, to this bleak New England coast ? No summer land- 
scape greets your eyes : the cold billows of the Atlantic roll and 
throw their spray along the shore. No gentle breezes from the 
verdant hills fan your heated brows : the chill northern blast sweeps 
sadly through the branches of our leafless woods. What charmed 
word has gone, like Scotland's fiery cross, over hills and plains to 
summon you to this spot? No battle-field of the war, with its 
silent graves and sacred memories, stretches out before your feet, 
calling you to a new consecration to your country and your flag ; 
no monument to the immortal dead rears its shaft aloft, awaiting its 
dedication at your hands. 



THE DINNER. 1 1 7 

No battle-field did I say ? Ah ! more sacred than any which 
ancient or modern history records is the battle-field on which you 
have this day trod. Agincourt, Austerlitz, Caunfe, Marathon, 
ThermopylfB, stamped as they are on the historic page as among 
the decisive battles of the world, sink into insignificance beside the 
battle which our Fathers fouo-ht alonj; the hill-sides and round the 
Rock of Plymouth. No armed hosts with shining helmet and 
waving plume met here in battle array ; no trumpet sounded the 
charge ; no warrior's lance or bristling steel met the opposing foe ; 
no royal hand crowned the victorious chief. No new division of 
regal power, no readjustment of imperial lines, no fate of potentate 
or prince, depended on the issue. But in that battle a new civiliza- 
tion asserted its claim against the insolent pretensions of the old ; the 
rights of man stood up against the domination of kings ; the human 
conscience fought to free itself from the shackles of servitude. This 
was the battle which our Fathers fought ; and neither hunger nor 
hardship, nor the terrible uncertainties of the future, nor the allure- 
ments of their distant home, nor pestilence nor death, could check 
their courage or shake their faith. With the battle still raging 
ay, well-nigh lost ; with one-half their number sleeping in their 
graves, — as if to stimulate a trust which they feared might fade, 
they sent their only refuge back across the seas, and sought with a 
serener confidence the guidance and protection of their God. 

Historians redord and poets sing that the Saracens of old de- 
stroyed their ships when they landed for conquest on the coast of 
Spain. But those Moslem hosts had stood on the shores of Africa 
flushed with victory, sighing for new lands to conquer, and they 
knew their arms were invincible. A brighter page and a sweeter 
song shall proclaim to nations yet unborn, as the noblest typifica- 
tion of faith in God, that sublimer incident in Christian history, 
the return of the " Mayflower " to England.^ 

Welcome, sons and daughters of the Pilgrims, to this hallowed 
field. Kneel reverently over the graves of your fathers, and swear 
anew your allegiance to their cause. Inhale, with fullest breath, 
the atmosphere of this sacred spot ; drink long and deep at this 
fountain of our Nation's greatness. Go back to your homes with 
no boast of your lineage on your lips, but with the vow recorded in 
your hearts to make yourselves worthier descendants of a noble 
ancestry. There are monumental acts as well as monumental edifices ; 
and even when the memorial on yonder hill shall in the fulness of 



118 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

time be completely finished, and its finger of faith shall point up- 
ward to the skies, let us remember that fidelity to duty — duty to 
ourselves, our country, and our God — will be the noblest monument 
which the children can rear in memory of the virtues and sacrifices 
of the Pilgrim Fathers of New P^ugland. 

The President. — I propose, as the first regular senti- 
ment, — 

The Pilgrims of 1620 : Weak, despised, exiled, they conquered a conti- 
nent: they are revolutionizing the world. 

I call upon Hon. Edward S. Tobey, President of the 
Pilgrim Society, to respond. 

SPEECH OF HON. E. S. TOBEY. 

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, — To respond to the toast 
which has been given in honor of men of whom it has been 
justly said " the world was not worthy " is no ordinary task ; and I 
might well wish, on your account, if not on my own, that some 
more gifted descendant of the Pilgrims had been selected for this 
duty. 

We have listened to-day to the eloquent words of one of Massa- 
chusetts' most gifted sons, a lineal descendant of the honored 
Governor Winthrop, as he has sketched the historic picture to 
which he has left little to be added by those who are now gathered 
around this festive board. It may be said, however, with all defer- 
ence to him, that the subject is too vast for any one person, on any 
one occasion, to entertain even a hope of completing it. We 
may repeat — indeed, we cannot fail to repeat — many of the 
principles and thoughts which have been so vividly brought before 
us to-day. I have intimated that the " master hand " has left some 
portions of the picture not quite complete. The sentiment just 
proposed has devolved on me the humble task of adding some of 
the lighter shades by which the prominent features he has so 
boldly sketched may stand out in still stronger relief. If I shall 
succeed in performing even that subordinate part, as I shall imper- 
fectly and very briefly refer to the more recent as well as the possible 
future history of our country as related to the principles of the 
Pilgrim Fathers, I may not wholly fail to meet the demands of 
the occasion. 



THE DINNER. 119 

Two centuries and a half have rolled away since our Fathers 
placed their feet on yonder hallowed Rock ; and we have gathered 
from every part of our land around this ancestral family altar, to 
lay on it the tribute of grateful hearts. Indeed, what more can 
we do to-day ? Words are often inadequate ; they are transient. 
Deeds are immortal. May we not well point to the heroic deeds of 
the sons of the Pilgrims, in defence of the Union, as some evidence of 
their gratitude, and that they both honor and appreciate the principles 
which lie at the foundation of this Republic? We have with us to- 
day, I rejoice to see, descendants of the Pilgrims, who fought on many 
a bloody field, and have thus repeated the sacrifice of the Fathers. 
On my left is one of the distinguished heroes of Gettysburg, who 
rolled back the tide of rebellion, until the Union flag floated victori- 
ously on those memorable heights, now for ever made historic. Says 
my informant, " I asked one of the aids of General Lee to what he 
attributed the loss of the battle of Gettysburg. ' Why,' said he, 
' we expected victory as much as we expected to go there, but every 
plan we laid was contravened from morning till night ; and I be- 
lieve that if ever God deserted our cause, it was there.' " Yes, my 
friends, he did desert it ; indeed, he never was with it. But he was 
with the descendants of the Pilgrims there, in the persons of those 
who carried the Union army to victory. Yes : the God of our 
Fathers was with them ; and then and there the tide of rebellion 
was stayed, the national government delivered from the hands of its 
enemies, and the American Union, let us hope, for ever established. 

Now what remains for this Nation is to go forward and consum- 
mate this work through the oft-recognized but indispensable agen- 
cies, — the open Bible, the school-house, the meeting-house, and, last 
but not least, through that without which even the Bible, if I may 
say it reverently, must be restricted in its influence, — the free 
ballot. The ballot must be maintained and defended at any and all 
costs. I believe that every patriotic heart in this land felt a 
deeper thrill when it was known that he who once carried our arms 
to victory, the President of the United States, had the courage to 
say by the presence of national troops in the city of New York, as he 
doubtless will say throughout the country, " The ballot-box must 
and shall be protected." 

With such institutions and measures let this Nation go forward. 
Let us fear no emigration from the one side or the other. This 
country is emphatically the asylum for the oppressed of all nations • 



120 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

Welcome them on either shore, the Atlantic or the Pacific. If our 
Fathers, in the wilderness and amidst savages, could afford to trust 
in their Bible and in the living God, — if the missionary could plant 
the standard of the cross in the Sandwich Islands, trusting in the 
God of our Fathers, until those islands, converted to Christianity, 
now, like gems in mid ocean, flash the rays of Christian civilization 
over the world, — cannot their descendants, with the vast moral 
resources and constantly augmenting power of this Nation, and a 
faith resting on the same enduring foundations, discharge the respon- 
sible trust bequeathed to them, of transmitting to posterity, and to the 
people of all nations who are seeking a home here, the institutions of 
civil and religious freedom? America is indeed destined to be the 
educator of the world. Instead of relying on missionary efforts alone, 
invaluable as they have been and are, to Christianize the idolatrous 
nations, many circumstances conspire to bring the people of foreign 
lands to our shores in ever-increasing numbers, to be moulded to 
Christianity through the influence of our institutions as well as by 
direct teachings of the Gospel. Accepting the responsibilities of the 
hour which Providence has placed on this Nation let it ever continue 
in the fulfilment of its great mission. Thus will it best testify its 
gratitude to the founders of the Republic, and may confidently hope 
for the continued blessing of Almighty God. Then shall it literally 
inherit the divine promise : " 1 will give the heathen for an inherit- 
ance and the uttermost parts of the earth for a possession." 

The President. — I have received by telegraph the fol- 
lowing toast from the President of the United States : — 

Our Pilgrim Fathers : May their children ever be as pure in motive, as 
patient in toil, and as brave in danger. 

The President. — In reply to that sentiment, I will give 

the following toast : — 

The President of the United States : The representative of forty millions 
of freemen, sheltered by the branches of the tree which our Fathers planted, 

Hon. Thomas Russell will respond. 

SPEECH OF HON. THOMAS RUSSELL. 

The name of the President, the words of the President, move all 
hearts. As his message unites Washington with Plymouth, so the 
magic of eloquence to-day has brought 1870 and 1620 into full 



THE DINNER. 



1-il 



accord. The sentiment suggests a wonderful contrast: Governor 
Carver, with his hundred shivering exiles, and President Grant, 
ruler of forty millions of free men, — of a land greater in ideas and 
principles of government than in decrees of longitude and latitude. 
We turn from the poor, lonely " Mayflower," with timbers sti-ained 
and rigging torn, staggering into Cape Cod harbor, to our mighty 
fleet sweeping up the Mississippi or into Mobile Bay, guided by 
that heart of oak, our good and gallant Farragut. We contrast 
Miles Standish leading his half score of soldiei's to Middleboro' or 
Weymouth, with Sherman marching from the mountains to the sea ; 
with Grant laying hold of Vicksburg and crushing rebellion at 
Appomattox. And we love to believe that all the glory of these 
days was prefigured in the faith of the days of old. The grim jest 
of our Fathers named " Billington Sea " in remembrance of the 
wanderer who mistook it for the Pacific. Yet might some graver 
pilgrim, as he stood upon the Burial Hill, their mount of vision, 
have seen afar off a country stretching from ocean to ocean, as he 
cried out in prophecy — 

" From Eastern rock to sunset sea 
The Continent is ours." 

I find strong points of resemblance in the great hearts of these 
distant ages. Look at the Indian policy of our Fathers, — justice 
and humanity, equality between the races ; the unbroken treaty 
made on the hill beyond the brook ; peace secured by right. Two 
hundred and fifty years have passed away. Once more the. red 
man is treated like a man ; and once more the world learns that the 
truest policy is justice. Honor to the Pilgrims ; honor to him who 
renews their noble policy. I find a broader resemblance in the 
firm, the obstinate devotion to duty which marks the hero of each 
age. Often might General Grant and his associates have ex- 
claimed : "It is not with us as with men whom small things dis- 
courage." Just here our Fathers fought out their battle of the 
wilderness. And they were determined to fight it out on the line 
of right and faith, though it took them ten winters before they were 
reinforced by another colony. Grander still is the identity of prin- 
ciple. In a dark hour, when the only light for Union shone round 
the bayonets of the Army of the South- West, General Grant uttered 
this noble sentiment : " Human freedom, the only true foundation 
for human government." This idea embodied in action gave us 

16 



122 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY^ 

victory. This was our Fathers' creed. Freedom from human con- 
trol in matters of faith — sure to result in freedom of State — was 
their guide. Grand is the compact of the " Mayflower ; " but many 
such a compact bound together the scattered churches of the free. 
To-day is kept sacred by a great sect, eminent in ability and piety, 
who celebrate the birth of Congregationalism in America. They 
might have chosen a broader word ; they might have boasted of a 
greater triumph. Independency — yes, Democracy in the name of 
Independency — stood on the sacred Rock, and claimed the continent 
for its own. Because Independents, our Fathers were tolerant, free, 
fitted to found a free State on a free Church. We honor the Puri- 
tans of Old England and New England, as we honor the grand 
old Church out of which the Puritan rock was hewed ; but we 
cannot forget that no Puritan came in the '' Mayflower." Inde- 
pendents and Separatists, all of them, every man of prominence, 
except Miles Standish, who belonged to no church, except the 
church of those whose ci-eed is to strike down wrong, and to uphold 
the weak. As I speak of Captain Standish, I love to recall the 
fact that the same arm which smote to death the savage Pecksuot 
was tenderly folded around sick men and dying women and famishing 
children, — glorious symbol of the Nation, that with one hand smote 
armed rebellion, while the other raised up a poor, despised, oppressed 
race, that they might take the place for which God sent them into 
the world. And this last triumph of right we owe to Pilgrim 
principles. All that series of victories, beginning with the Declara- 
tion of Independence and ending (no, not ending) with the declara- 
tion of the equality of man, — they were all assured, they were all 
DECREED, when a new world became the possession of a band of 
earnest men, whose faith was that in the chief concern of man he 
had no superior, save his Maker. Once the Mayflower of the 
woods was the emblem of our country, — the Mayflower, shrinking 
from the cold, hiding under the leaves, only enduring the frost in the 
faith of approaching spring. Now she is likened to the spread- 
ing cedar, to the proud oak, — better far, as the Orator of to-day 
has said, our nation is as the tree of life, whose leaves are for the 
healing of the nations, — yes, at last, of all nations. It is our 
faith that even the wickedness of war, the crimes of Emperors, the 
madness of Kings, shall turn the hearts of men to the lessons of 
Plymouth Rock, to the example of the American Union. 



THE DINNER. 123 

" Take, Freedom ! take thy radiant round : 
When dimmed, revive ; wlien lost, return ; 
Till not a shrine on earth be found 
Whereon thy glories shall not burn." 

The President then announced the next regular toast, 
as follows : — 

Plymouth and Jamestown — the Pilgrims and the Cavaliers — Freedom and 
Slavery : They met on the field of Gettysburg, and Freedom conquered. 

The President. — General Howard, the hero of Getty s- 



SPEECH OF gen. O. O. HOWARD. 

I thank you, Mr. President, and the other gentlemen who have 
been instrumental in inviting me to be present on this occasion. I 
have really been to-day a learner, and from my entrance into the 
town of Plymouth until this moment I have been enjoying a per- 
petual feast. I thank you again for the sentiment which a few 
moments ago I read for the first time. It i-eally is the embodiment 
of a speech. It needs very little to elaborate it. Plymouth and 
the Pilgrims on one side, Jamestown and the Cavaliers on the 
other, — the conflict which Mr. Seward called " irrepressible " 
between Freedom and Slavery. We have only to congratulate 
ourselves to-day that slavery is no more. You will notice in that 
little compact which was made before the Pilgrims landed, that 
the first sentiment, — a sentiment which is to-day I'epeated in every 
document, and quoted in every speech that is made in regard to 
them, — the first sentiment was " the honor and glory of God." 
That they put first and foremost; and I thank the Orator of the Day 
with all my soul for his fidelity, that he kept prominently before us, 
from the beginning to the end of his discourse, the fundamental sen- 
timent of those men, our Fathers, who came to this country, to suffer, 
to toil, and to die, that they might perpetuate the principles they 
held so dear and sacred. I would that we might to-day stop and 
think and pray, and go back to that original principle of holding up 
before all things else the God of our Fathers, and the Lord Jesus 
Christ as His express image. If we would only be loyal to Him, 
first and foremost, then indeed and in truth would the great object 
of the conflict to which I have referred be, not only seemingly, but 
in reality accomplished. 



124 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

But it fieems to me, as we listen to this iiistory, as we reflect upon 
the situation to-day, and as we congratulate ourselves upon what 
has already been accomplished, we should do well, as our Orator has 
told us, to stop and consider our shortcomings, consider our errors, 
and consider how we have departed from the pure and simple prin- 
ciples of our Fathers, in so many ways ; and to begin anew, to repent, 
to turn back unto God, become loyal to His Son, our Saviour, and 
go forth into the field of conflict again, and fight until the end of 
our existence, and sow seed that shall spring up and bear fruit for 
generations to come. 

Wliat is this conflict, and where are the fields on which it is to be 
fought ? They are at home ; they are in our families ; they are in 
our churches ; they are in our towns, of which this town of Plymouth 
is a representative ; they are throughout our borders. The fields 
are wherever the foreigners who come among us are to be found ; 
they are where the Indians are to-day ; they are where the Chinese 
are. Let us go forth, and carry the banner of the cross wherever 
we go, and fearlessly plant ourselves on the simple faith of the 
simple and true church of the Pilgrims. God grant that all 
the descendants of the Pilgrims, and all who love their pure 
principles, who are here present to-day, may be prepared to make 
a sacrifice of themselves for the good of their fellow-men, that they 
may establish for ever in their own households, in the community, 
in the State, in these blessed United States, and in the world, that 
principle which is above every other principle, which is expressed 
in these words, that are inimitable : " Thou shalt love the Lord thy 
God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself." Let that 
neighbor be of any race, whether it be African or Anglo-Saxon, 
whether it be Indian or Ciiinese ; from whatever region of the 
world he may come. God grant that we may be brave enough and 
pure enough to carry this leaven with us wherever we go. And 
may the time soon come when this Nation shall be a purified people, 
purified unto the Lord our God, and when we shall be in deed and 
in truth a missionary nation, to carry peace and good-will wherever 
we go, and to carry the blessed, Gospel into every part of the known 
world. 

I am a soldier. I have endeavored to fight your battles on many 
a field, of which Gettysburg has been referred to as a type; but I 
tell you the true conflict is that of true Christian men and true 
Christian women. 



THE DINNER. 125 

The President here stated, in order that visitors from 
abroad might feel perfectly easy with regard to the de- 
parture of trains, that arrangements had been made for an 
express and way train to Boston, after tlie dinner, and that he 
should give thirty minutes' notice of the time of their de- 
parture. 

He then recalled to mind the fiict, that in October, 1632, 
John Winthrop, the Governor of the Colony of Massachusetts, 
in order to cultivate friendship with the Pilgrims, made an 
excursion to Plymouth, and was two days on his way. He 
followed tlie Indian trail through Scituate, Hanover, Pem- 
broke, and Kingston, and was received outside of the town 
by Governor Bradford. He remained in Plymouth over 
Sunday, and, as the tradition states, " spoke in meeting." 
The President closed these prefatory remarks by announcing 
as the next regular toast, ^ — 

The Orator of the Day: As his Purican ancestor followed tlie trail of 
the Indians to speak words of friendship to tlie Pilgrims, so he to-day has 
followed the trail of his ancestor, and spoken words of wisdom and eloquence 
to their descendants. 

SPEECH OF HON. ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, — I am sure the whole 
compauy will agree with me in one thing, at least ; and that is that 
my voice has been heard for a sufficient time already on this occasion. 
I propose, thei'efore, in a very iew words to make my acktiowl- 
edgmeuts to you all for this kind and friendly greeting, and for the 
compliment expressed in the sentiment just offered. I hope I may 
be allowed to take it as the welcome assurance that I have not al- 
together disappointed my audience in the eifort I have made to-day. 
You know, Mr. President, that it was with no little distrust and 
hesitation that I accepted the flattering invitation of your Com- 
mittee. I could not forget whom I was to follow. That man en- 
counters no easy or enviable responsibility who attempts to glean a 
field over which have already successively passed the broad scythe 
of Daniel Webster and the golden sickle of Edward Everett. I am 
conscious of having followed them lonrfn interrallo, in more senses 



126 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

of the words than one. I might, indeed, claim to have been at least 
one day ahead of them both ; since we of this generation have 
learned that we are not quite so far behind our Fathers as we thought 
we were, and that the 21st and not the 2 2d of December, which 
they celebrated, is the true date of the landing. But I confess to 
being a full half century behind at least one of them in every other 
respect. I was hardly of an age to be here with Webster fifty years 
ago. At any rate, I was not here. But I well remember how the 
fame of that oration shook every school-bench in New England, and 
how soon it supplied the choicest pieces of declamation for every 
S(;hool-boy. Four years afterward I was here ; and I shall not 
soon forget that long, wintry stage-coach drive of ten or twelve 
hours each way, in company, I am glad to remember, with one of 
your own townsmen, who has long since been at the head of our 
Boston Bar (Hon. Sidney Bartlett), and in company too, I believe, — 
for certainly we were here together, — with the excellent pastor of 
our Boston Brattle Street Church (Rev. Dr. Lothrop). But still 
less can I forget how abundantly and superabundantly we were 
all rewarded for the fatigues and exposures of our journey by the 
magnificent oration of Edward Everett. 

May I be pardoned, however, for adding that it was not only 
the vivid remembrance of what others had done here so gloriously 
which made me shrink from undertaking the task you assigned me ? 
May I be pardoned for confessing that I was a little afraid of my own 
shadow ? I could not quite forget that in the city of New York, at 
the call of the New England Society there, I had gone over the same 
ground thirty-one years ago to-morrow. I was then but half as old 
as I am now, and had all the energy and ambition of youth. It was 
my very first Occasional Address anywhere, I believe ; and I had 
spared no pains in its preparation. It was two hours and ten minutes 
in delivery ; and I remember that at the end my cherished and 
lamented friend, the late Bishop Wainwright, who had sat near me, 
called my attention to the fact, of which I had been entirely uncon- 
scious, that my manuscript had been upside down during the whole 
time. I should not dare to trust my memory with such a load in- 
these later years of my life. And, indeed. I despaired of being able 
to compose another address on the same subject half as good as that 
was ; and I am by no means sure that I have done so. But while I 
was pondering upon these and other discouragements and difiiculties, I 
suddenly bethought me of that old Massachusetts Colony, with which 



THE DINNER. 127 

you have so kindly associated me. I bethought me what a comfort, 
what a delight, it must have been to them on theii- arrival at Salem, 
in the first desolation of their condition, not only to find Endicott and 
Higginson on the spot awaiting them ; but to know that Bradford and 
Brewster and Winslow were already established here at Plymouth, 
ready and eager to exchange, as they did exchange, the right hand of 
fellowship with them,^° I bethought me of that noble first Gover- 
nor (John Winthrop), whose blood to-day seems coursing through 
my veins in a fuller tide than ever before, and whose image seemed 
to rebuke me for hesitating an instant to speak in his name, as well 
as in my own, in honor of the Pilgrims. He reminded me of the 
powder which he had himself furnished them, in a time of their dis- 
tress and danger, at his own cost, and how gratefully it was received 
and acknowledged by them. And so, Mr. Pi-esident, while I was 
musing, the fire burned, and I resolved to speak with my tongue, as 
I have spoken to-day. I resolved, in a word, that I would not de- 
cline to supply to the descendants of the Pilgrims, for their occasion 
and at their call, such ammunition as I could muster, even should it 
be at my own cost; — feeling sure that they would make all proper 
allowances for the fact that others had already exhausted the essen- 
tial ingredient for such a composition* — that Attic salt, which is 
as necessary for an oration as saltpetre is for gunpowder." 

But I have occupied far more of the time of this occasion than 
belongs to me ; and I must not delay you longer, while so many others 
remain to be called on. Let me only say that as the Pilgrims gave 
me the earliest inspiration in the way of occasional oratory, I shall 
be more than content if they shall have afibrded me the last. If I 
have had any faculty in dealing with such occasions as this, — and I 
am sensible how small it is, — I am ready to say to-day at Plymouth 
Rock, "/Tic cestus artemque repono." I can certainly say that I 
shall be present in the body at no other Pilgrim Jubilee. Let me 
only hasten, then, to thank you and your Society, and all who have 
so kindly listened to me, for the distinguished compliment which has 
been paid me, and let me propose as a sentiment, — 

The Sons and Daughters of New England: Wherever they 
may be gathered, and wherever they may be scattered, here and in 
every clime, now and to the end of time, may they never forget the 
Rock, nor ever fail to be true to the memory and the example of 
those who landed upon it. 



128 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

The President. — I will read as the next sentiment : — 

The distinguished Son of the Orator of 1824 : More fortunate than his father 
in tracing his descent from the Pilgrims. 

I will introduce to you William Everett, Esq. 

POEM BY WILLIAM EVERETT, ESQ. 

Ladies and Gentlemen, — I was requested a short time ago 
by the Chairman to furnish something iu verse for this occasion; 
and as I was not wholly averse to writing verse, I trust it will not 
prove that I am perverse, and that my effort is not entirely a re- 
verse. If I can have your attention for seventy lines only, I shall 
be content. 

PLYMOUTH ROCK — 1620 — 1870. 

Strike up the good old song once more, upon the good old day ; 

The good old blood has reason yet the good old words to say : 

They've pressed us hard, these modern men, and blustered loud and 

long. 
To drown the ancient echoes of that good old Pilgrim song. 
Now since the Lord has sent again the year of Jubilee, 
Here comes our challenge, scoffers, to ring from sea to sea : 
There's nothing this new world can show to beat the good old stock. 
The vine the Fathers planted this day on Plymouth Rock ! 

You boys of rail and telegraph, say, whence did you derive 

Your energy to trample, your genius to contrive? 

Could you have borne an ocean voyage as patiently as they, 

From August to December, with sermons twice a day? 

Your wonderfid inventions, — say, have you got the skill 

To make the Mayflower furniture, that multiplies at will, — 

The Edward Winslow tables, the Wdliam Bradford clock. 

The Richard ^V^arren high-backed chairs, all dumped on Plymouth Rock ? 

You're great on Agriculture ; it's arduous work to till 

Those broad, fat river bottoms, on which you sit so still. 

A stubborn land, a stormy sea, they fought with spade and rod, 

And found the chief productions were granite and salt cod. 

Your population's spreading ; with them was it begun, 

One child born on the ocean, and in the harbor one. 

And never did the Lord vouchsafe his increase to his flock 

Richer than to the five-score souls that stepped on Plymouth Rock. 



THE DINNER. 129 

Your boasted institutions, your colleges and schools 

To teach the whole world every thing, yet leave us still some fools ; 

Your companies that turn to stock all things beneath the sun, 

And read our Nation's motto, " The many lost in one ; " 

Your leagues and constitutions spread like net-work o'er the land, — 

Are feeble to the cords of steel that bound the Pilgrim band. 

And in itself one compact doth all their treasures lock. 

Signed in the " Mayflower's " cabin, and sealed on Plymouth Rock. 

That liberty you proudly claim of action and of thought 
Was all across the ocean by Scrooby's Pilgrims brought ; 
A harder need compelled them to leave a peaceful home ; 
They found a fiercer savage within these forests roam. 
So in your honest triumph beware how ye withhold 
Due honor from your Fathers, the mighty men of old. 
At home they met unflinching the cell, the scourge, the block. 
And here the land's foundations laid firm on Plymouth Rock. 

We know the fun you love so well at Puritans to poke. 
Your witches and your Quakers and every threadbare joke. 
Go read your history, school-boys ; learn on one glorious page 
The Pilgrim towers untainted above that iron age. 
From stains of mightiest heroes the Pilgrims' hands are clean. 
In Plymouth's free and peaceful streets no bigot's stake was seen ; 
The sons of other saints may wince and pale beneath your mock, 
Harmless the fool-born jesting flows back from Plymouth Rock. 

Nay, let the strain soar higher ; still louder swell the song ; 

Claim all the starry honors that to our sires belong ; 

Two hundred years and fifty, brothers, this day have flown. 

Since first from out the godless world our Fathers came alone. 

Then France was flown with glorj^ and Spain was swol'n with pride, 

And England rested in her might, and Rome the world defied : 

The scoff of sword and sceptre, of mitre and of frock, 

The seed of God in tears was sown this day on Plymouth Rock. 

One-fourth of time's great cycle hath o'er the ages passed. 
And the stroke of God's great vengeance the guilty finds at last. 
Helpless the Roman tyrant is shaking on his hill. 
And Spain before a stranger boy must bend her haughty will ! 
The plains of France are trampled in gore by steel-hoofed foes, 
And England hears a warning in every breeze that blows ; 
At all the godless thresholds Death's equal footsteps knock. 
But peace and joy and safety are ours on Plymouth Roik. 

17 



130 PILGRIM' ANNIVERSARY. 

The storm of God's destruction is sweeping o'er the skies, 

The rains in wrath are falling, the floods in anger rise ; 

Woe to the men who on the race he loves have laid their hand. 

And woe to all the foolish ones who build upon the sand. 

Let torrents fall and billows swell, and winds their fury spend : 

Our Fathers' God from every ill their children shall defend. 

No cloud can dim our nation's sun, no stroke our dwelling shock. 

By great Jehovah founded this day on Plymouth Rock. 

The President. — I have received by telegraph the fol- 
lowing toast from the 'New England Society of St. Louis : — 

Plymouth Rock: The foundation-stone of Western civilization. 
In response to which, I will propose — 

The Great West : The cap-stone of the monument which sliall stand in 
everlasting memory of the Pilgrim Fathers of New England. 

The President. — The next toast which I will propose 
is as follows : — 

The Compact of the Mayflower : '2 The first written constitution the world 
ever saw, the foundation-stone of free governments, " the first effectual 
counterpoise in the scale of human rights." 

The President called on Hon. Henry Wilson to re- 
spond, who was heartily greeted. 

SPEECH OF HON. HENRY WILSON. 

These flying moments admonish me that I must make but a brief 
response to the sentiment just given by the chair, and so kindly 
received. The Orator of the Day, in the magnificent address to 
which we have listened with high gratification, — an address which 
honors him alike as a scholar, as an orator, as a statesman, und as 
a Christian, — has told us that it was the Christian faith that 
brought the Pilgrims, who stepped on Plymouth Rock two hundred 
and fifty years ago this day, to the Western world. While I agree -^ 
in the sentiment that it was piety, pure and simple faith in God and 
in his Son, that brought those brave men across the waves, I cannot 
forget — we should all gratefully remember on this day — that 
they laid in the cabin of the " Mayflower " the foundations of civil 
liberty in America. Bancroft, in his history, tells us that in the 



THE DINNER. 131 

cabin of the " Mayflower " humanity recovered its rights ; that 
government was then founded by them on the basis of equal law for 
the general good. That compact proclaimed that, for the glory of 
God, the advancement of the Christian faith, the honor of country, 
the general good, there should be just and equal laws. These 
grand doctrines of the Pilgrims, then embodied in a compact of 
government, have been inspirations and examples in all the succeed- 
ing generations. From the day that compact was signed to the 
time in which we live, there has been a struggle here in the 
Western world to establish and maintain just and equal laws for 
the general good. The example of the Pilgrims has inspired the 
faith and strengthened the arms of those vrho have battled in legis- 
lative halls and on bloody fields. It inspired the colonies in their 
struggle for more than a century against the aggressive policy of 
England. It inspired the burning eloquence of James Otis, and the 
pen of the organizer of the American Revolution, that grand old 
Puritan, Samuel Adams. It inspired the majestic eloquence of 
Daniel Webster, when he stood here half a century ago, and de- 
nounced the slave-trade as the crime of his century. It inspired 
John Quincy Adams in his grand struggle, in the hall of Congress, 
to maintain the sacred right of petition ; and the martyred Lovejoy 
to vindicate, on the banks of the Mississippi, the freedom of the 
press. It inspired William Lloyd Garrison when he proclaimed 
immediate emancipation and his firm resolve to be heard" by the 
American people. It inspired Abraham Lincoln in his immortal 
Proclamation of Emancipation, which smote the fetters from the 
limbs of three and a half millions of men. It inspired brave men 
among the living and the dead, in minorities and in majorities, in 
the long struggle which incorporated into the Constitution the 
thirteenth amendment, that made it impossible that a slave should 
tread the soil of the Republic ; the fourteenth amendment, that 
defined the rights of American citizenship ; and the fifteenth amend- 
ment, that gave every male citizen the right to vote, and practically 
the right to be voted for. This grand compact of government on 
board the " Mayflower," adopted before the men who made it had 
trod the soil of the continent, will inspire their descendants and brave 
men in the advancing future to hope on and struggle on to make 
equal and just laws for the general good, the vital, animating, and 
living spirit of American institutions, so long as tlie memory of the 
Pilffriras shall live in the Western world. 



132 PILGRIM A>'NIYERSARY. 

The Presidext. — The next sentiment which I proposed 
to offer was to be responded to by a gentleman who is neces- 
sarily absent. I cannot forbear, however, giving the toast 
in honor of our absent guest, Willia3I Lloyd Garrison, 
Esq, — 

The great Captains of Freedom, who gracefully surrendered their commis- 
sions when the victory was won. 

I have a letter, received to day from Mr. Garrison, in which 

he expresses regret at not being able to be present, and adds 

in a postscript : " If I were present at your commemorative 

dinner, I could offer no sentiment more in accordance with 

my own mind, or more appropriate to the occasion, than is 

contained in the following lines by Lowell : — 

" ' New occasions teach new duties ; time makes ancient good imcouth ; 
They must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth. 
Lo ! before us gleam her camp-fires ! we ourselves must Pilgrims be ; 
Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate winter sea, 
Xor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's blood-rusted key.' " 

The Presidext. — The next sentiment which I have to 
propose is as follows : — 

The past Orators of this Anniversary : They have added lustre to a day 
already famous in the annals of our history. 

I introduce to you the Hon. George S. Hlllard, of 
Boston. 

SPEECH OP HON. GEORGE S. HILLARD. 

In asking me to speak to this toast, you set me a task embarrass- 
iug from the very wealth of matter which the theme presents. The 
first and the second and the third virtue of an after-dinner speech 
is that it shall be short ; and I could not do justice to the past 
orators of this occasion without speaking at such length as to break- 
this rule, and make you all wish that I too were a past and not a 
present orator. 

The landing of the Pilgrims was not publicly noticed until long 
after the last survivor of them had been gathered to his fathers. 
Like many memorable events in history, its significance was not 



THE DINNER. 133 

revealed to the actors. In nothing were the Pilgrim Fathers more 
admirable than in their unconsciousness and absolute freedom from 
self-reference. Like Moses when he came down from Mount 
Sinai, with the tablets of testimony in his hand, they wist not that 
their faces shone. It is ever thus with spiritual light. It is a 
glory not perceived by him upon whom it rests ; and the moment 
a man knows that his face shines, that moment the light begins to 
grow dim. 

The first public celebration took place so late as 1769, and was 
under the auspices of a club of Plymouth gentlemen, among whom 
we see the still familiar names of Watson, Warren, Davis, and 
Russell. It was attended with such expressions and marks of 
honor as were at command in those days of plain living and modest 
means. A cannon was fired, a flag was raised, a procession was 
formed, and a " decent repast " was served, beginning with a large 
baked Indian whortleberry pudding. This was in conformity with 
the good old New England usage, which was to serve pudding first. 
Perhaps this reversal of the natural order of dinner was due to the 
reverence felt by our Fathers for the primitive language of the Old 
Testament, since in the Hebrew Bible the beginning of the book is 
at the end of the volume. In the evening there was a social gather- 
ing at the Old Colony Hall, where the President of the club " de- 
livered several approi^riate toasts." Whether these toasts were 
dry or dipped, we are not informed. 

The next year, 1770, just a hundred years ago to-morrow, the 
day was celebrated in much the same manner as in the preceding 
year, with the addition of an address, which was spoken " with 
decent firmness," by Edward Winslow, Jr., Esq., a member of the 
club ; and, as his discourse was not above ten minutes in length, the 
firmness of the hearers could not have been severely tried. 

During the remainder of the second century, except during the 
thirteen years between 1780 and 1794, the event was noticed by 
either a public or a private celebration, and discourses were de- 
livered by men of note ; among them John Quincy Adams, Presi- 
dent Kirkland, Horace Holley, and Francis C. Gray, — the last a 
remarkable man, but who has left little behind him to show what 
cause his friends had to admire his abilities and attainments. 

But you, Mr. President, will permit me to pause for a moment 
upon one name in the list of early orators, that of Judge Davis, 
your kinsman, who gave the discourse in 1800. No man was 



134 



PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 



better fitted to speak on this theme ; for no one had studied the 
Hves and labors of the Pilgrims more carefully, and no one felt for 
them a deeper reverence. His was the pure and lofty spirit of the 
Pilgrims, softened by the influences of a milder age and a creed 
less stern. In him were seen the '■' prisca fides" the ancestral faith 
of Marcellus, and the " mitis sapientia" the gentle wisdom of 
La^lius. He was wise and good, tender and true : the calm of age 
was in his youth, and the freshness and hopefulness of youth were 
in his age. 

It was under his guidance that I first visited this town, and saw 
the spots hallowed by the footsteps of the Pilgrims, not darkened 
by the frown of winter, but touched with the soft lights of departing 
summer. We were, as Wordsworth says, — 

" A pair of friends, though I was young 
And Matthew seventy-two." 

He saw in me the friend and companion of his beloved grandson, 
William Watson Sturgis, a youth of rare promise, in whose early 
and sad death so many fond hopes were shattered. How distinctly 
do the form and presence of the good old man stand before me at 
this moment! — his venerable head, his benignant countenance, his 
low voice, which was as incapable of loud or harsh tones as his 
breast was of harboring the passions that crave such utterance. 

In 1820, at the close of the second century of the life of New 
England, the Pilgrim »Society was formed ; and it was determined 
to celebrate the day in a manner which should respond to the 
sti'ong interest felt in the occasion by all the sons of the Pilgrims. 
In selecting Mr. Webster as their orator, the Society did but con- 
firm the unanimous choice of public sentiment. He was then in 
the pride and prime of his magnificent manhood, and had won a 
national reputation as a lawyer and a statesman. In this presence 
I need not dwell upon the merits of his admirable discourse ; its 
weight of matter, its strength and simplicity of style, its variety and 
happy choice of topics, its political wisdom, its dignity of sentiment, 
and the splendid eloquence of particular passages. Nor need I add 
how much its substantial claims were aided and enforced by the 
speaker's remarkable physical gifts, — his noble presence, his vigor- 
ous action, and the power of his brow, eye, and voice. In his subse- 
quent life, Mr. Webster often addressed larger bodies, and spoke on 
more exciting topics, but never did he produce a greater eflFect than 



THE DINNER. 135 

he did upon the select and sympathetic audience which then and 
there hung upon his lips. 

In 1824 the lot fell upon him who was then the choicest flower 
of New England scholarship, and the other hope — spes altera — 
of New England demonstrative eloquence, Mr. Everett, at that 
time Professor of Greek Literature in Harvard College. My 
young friends around me, who saw Mr. Everett in his latter years, 
when a certain pensive gravity hung over his manner and expres- 
sion, can hardly imagine what he was in tho-e days, before he had 
left the primrose path of letters for the steep and thorny way of 
politics ; when the winds of morning were blowing round him, when 
youth was on the prow and the enchantress Hope at the helm. He 
vvas full of radiant life, and overflowing, graceful power. His Ply- 
mouth discourse is a beautiful and finished expression of his rare 
gifts and accomplishments, with striking views and brilliant pictures, 
the style rich and animated, and the whole glowing with a certain 
vernal flush of color in harmony with the speaker's youthful aspect 
and exquisite elocution. To the hearers, it was the unfolding of a 
web of Tyrian dye, and we who read it will see that the staple is 
good and the texture firm. 

I am not going to compare these two discourses, still less the 
two men. Either would be an ungracious office. It would be un- 
seemly in New Hampshire and Vermont to dispute which is the 
more precious gift of Heaven, the granite of the former or the 
marble of the latter. Let us be thankful for both. 

But let me for a moment note a feature of resemblance in the two 
discourses. Both speakers look at their subject from what may be 
called a secular and historical point of view. To them the Pilgrims 
are chiefly interesting as, to use the language of Governor Hutchin- 
son, " the founders of a flourishing town and colony, if not of the 
whole British colony in North America." I think we can see in 
both speakers a feeling that the wonderful growth of the country 
was due, so far as it was due to purely moral causes, not so much 
to any distinctive traits in the faith and lives of the Pilgrims, 
making them Separatists from the Church of England and oflTenders 
against the law of England, as to the fact that they were English- 
men. Exiles as they were, they brought with them from England 
the speech and the institutions of the land from whose step-mother 
frown and malediction they had fled. 

A brilliant French writer, whose recent unhappy death our coun- 



136 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

try and his own yet lament, speaking of the progress of an English 
settlement in Australia, said that if it had been colonized by French- 
men they would have there only a camp, a cafe, a theatre, and a 
prison. Our Fathers brought with ihem from England two priceless 
possessions, — the Common Law and King James's Bible : the 
former a vital organism, not of symmetrical form and graceful out- 
line, but full of the vigorous sap of liberty, and drawing its growth 
from the soil of the popular heart ; the latter, apart from its tran- 
scendent claims as a revelation of God to man, in a purely intel- 
lectual aspect the most precious treasure that any modern nation 
enjoys, preserving as it does our noble language at its best point of 
growth, just between antique ruggedness and modern refinement, 
embalming immortal truths in words simple, strong, and sweet, that 
charm the child at the mother's knee, that nerve and calm the 
soldier in the dread half hour before the shock of battle, that com- 
fort and sustain the soul that is entering upon the valley of the 
shadow of death ! Infinite has been the value of the Bible in 
training and furming the mind of New England, and through it that 
of the whole country. 

I am one of those who think it unwise to foster ill-will between 
England and America ; and good-will between nations, as between 
individuals, is maintained by being kind to one another's virtues, 
and a little blind to one another's faults. Sir Samuel Romilly used 
to bless the memory of Louis XIV., because his grandfather, by 
reason of that monarch's revocation of the edict of Nantes, had fled 
to England, and thus he himself had been born an Englishman and 
not a Frenchman ; and standing on the rock of Plymouth, I confess 
that I feel somewhat grateful to Archbishop Laud and the Judges 
of the Star Chamber, because to them we owe it that New England 
was settled by Englishmen ; and thus the progress of our country is 
traced not by the camp, the cafe, the theatre, and the prison, but 
by the meeting-house, the school-house, the court-house, and the 
ballot-box, all the legitimate fruits of the Bible and the Common 
Law. 

The President. — I take this fitting opportunity, after 
the allusion by my friend Mr. Hillard to the Orator of 1820, 
to state that since I took the chair I have received, as a 
present to tlie Pilgrim Society, from Francis Russell Stod- 



THE DINNER. 1-37 

dard, Esq., the original letter (which I hold in my hand) 
of Hon. Daniel Webster, accepting the invitation of the 
Trustees of that Society to deliver his great oration. 

It bears date Boston, July 8, 1820, and its text is as 
follows : — 

Dear Sir, — I am sensible of the respect shown me by the 
Trustees of Ihe Pilgrim Society, in requesting me to deliver an 
address before them in December next. I do not hesitate to com- 
ply with their wishes, although I cannot but know how many others 
there are better able than myself to make a performance which 
should be worthy of the Society and of the occasion. 
With great regard, your obedient servant, 

Daniel Webster. 

The President. — Mrs. Hemans's hymn beginning, — 

" The breaking waves dashed high," — 

will now be sung by Samuel B. Notes, Esq., of Canton. 

The hymn was sung with fine effect, Gilmore's band 
playing an accompaniment ; and Mr. Noyes was warmly 
applauded. 

The President. — I will propose as the next senti- 
ment — 

The Interests of Learning : Always recognized by our Fathers as a prime 
necessity of the State. 

I will introduce to you Hon. John H. Clifford, 
President of the Board of Overseers of Harvard College. 

SPEECH OF HON. JOHN H. CLIFFORD. 

3fr. President, — When I received your very kind note in- 
forming me that President Eliot of Harvard College had been com- 
pelled by the pressure of his official duties to decline your invitation 
to these festivities, and requesting, if it were agreeable to me, that 
I would respond to the sentiment you have just read, I felt that a 
compliance with your wishes involved a twofold cause of regret, 
both to the company and to myself. 

In any thing having reference to " Harvard College," or to " the 
interests of learning," I know too well how much we have lost in 

18 



138 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

not having President Eliot himself to answer in their behalf, — one 
who represents so admirably the latest fruits of that spirit, so honor- 
able to our Fathers, which has blazoned the whole of our history 
with the evidence of their supreme regard for the great cause of 
popular education. 

He could have told us, without exaggeration, that the ancient 
University, his recent accession to the government and guardianship 
of which has given such inspiration to the confidence of its friends, 
is at least justifying the fond expectations of the Fathers, Pilgrim 
and Puritan alike, who founded it as one of the chief and favored 
objects of their highest hopes and aspirations. He could have said, 
I think with truth, that its present condition and prospects would 
have satisfied any one of those Pilgrims whom my eloquent friend, 
the Orator of the Day, in his mastei-ly and unsurpassed portraiture 
of them, to which we have just listened so delightedly, introduced 
to us as revisiting the scenes of their earthly pilgrimage, and in- 
quii'ing what had been the changes and what the advances since 
they passed to a higher sphere ; — and would have jjrompted him to 
confess that " the great promise and hope we made and cherished, 
so far as the College was concerned, has at least been kept and real- 
ized." 

Why, sir, in their day, to quote the words of one who has been 
facetiously called the poet " of all of our Homes" but whom I re- 
gard as eminently entitled, by his immortal tributes to their mem- 
ory, to be called the Poet of the Pilgrims, — 

" Why, who was in the college, when college first begun ? 
Two nephews of the President, and a Professor's son ! 
They turned a ' little Injun' by as brown as any bun, 
Lord, how the Seniors knocked about that Freshman class of one ! " 

A Freshman class of one, Mr. President ! while of the ingenuous 
youth who throng there to-day, — " the rose and expectancy of the 
fair State," — the members of classes are numbered by hundreds, and 
the curriculum that is open to them under the guidance of faithful 
and thoroughly accomplished teachers surpasses in comprehensive- 
ness and completeness more than all the learning of which Brewster, 
the great scholar of the Pilgrim band, ever dreamed, — more than 
Christ Church or Baliol, more than all the great Universities of 
England or the Continent, with their proudest scholarship, could in 
their day have compassed or comprehended. Does not such a reply 



THE DINNER. 139 

as this, which the President of Harvard College could have made 
to your toast, in language such as would have made my inadequate 
statement of the contrast seem poor and meagre, furnish us with a 
satisfactory assurance that the education of their people, which the 
early Fathers declared must be " the saving hope of the Colony," has 
been through all our history steadfastly maintained and fostered ? 

Having thus discharged the vicarious duty you imposed upon me, 
Mr. President, to the honor of which I had no other title than my 
official connection with the government of the College, so generously 
conferred upon me by its sons, — a connection I can never fail at 
any time or anywhere gratefully to appreciate and acknowledge, — 
I ventui'e to claim a moment moi'e, to say a word upon a kindred 
topic, which but for your suggestion and my own sense of loyalty to 
you and to the occasion, in regarding your request as a command, I 
had intended to speak. 

The early records of the Colony of New Plymouth tell us — and 
it is a proud evidence of the interest of the Fathers in good learn- 
ing and popular education — that the proceeds of what was to them 
a valuable herring fishery at Cape Cod were constituted a fund for 
the support of a free school in the Colony. This fact, taken in con- 
nection with the early establishment of the College, — a period so 
early that it would not have been strange if the supply of their 
pressing material wants had engrossed all their thoughts and tasked 
all their efforts, — " to the end," as they declared, " that good learn- 
ing may not die out amongst us," has suggested to me a sort of 
theory, it may be a fanciful one, that there is some subtle and mys- 
terious connection between Education and the Fisheries. And as 
" the Fisheries " are to-day the great topic of national interest, ay, 
of more interest than a thousand " Alabaraas ; " and as we here in 
Massachusetts mean to support our patriotic President, who has just 
honored us by sending a telegraphic toast to our table, when he 
stands up as resolutely as he has done in his recent annual mes- 
sage for the rights of our New England fishermen, — you will 
pardon me a further illustration or two of the analogy I have sug- 
gested between these great interests of the old Colony and Massa- 
chusetts Bay. My excellent and eloquent friend, Mr. Hillard, has 
just told us that he " is one of those who think it unwise to foster 
ill-will between England and America." I agree with him fully, sir. 
But at the same time I must declare that I am one of those who 
deem it eminently wise to require something like equal and exact 



140 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

justice from England ; and I venture to say that education will 
begin to lose its value anaong us when we shall submit to any 
restriction upon that great interest of New England, by the fruits 
of which it has been sustained and cherished. Why, sir, what has 
the connection between them been throughout our whole Colonial, 
Provincial, and National history? Let me trace its outline. 

Our friend, Professor Agassiz, whom Harvard College, among the 
great benefits she has conferred upon the country, enticed from his 
European home to become an American citizen, and bestow upon 
us the unrivalled fruits of his boundless scientific researches and ac- 
complishments, maintains that there is some pathological or psycho- 
logical relation between the human brain and the fishes of the sea, 
— that in the phosphorus of the finny tribes are to be found the 
peculiar pabulum and nutriment of the brain which make bright, 
thinking men. Our Fathers, sir, though they may have been igno- 
rant of the Professor's scientific theory, never failed to manifest their 
high appreciation of the value of these " denizens of the deep." 
While it is an undisputed fact of history that the only motive which 
led the Pilgrims of New Plymouth across the ocean was to secure 
the enjoyment of " freedom to worship God," you know, sir, it has 
been claimed by some irreverent commentators in reference to the 
Puritans of Massachusetts, that the chief object of their colonizing 
adventure was " to fish and trade." The facetious lines attributed 
to one of the early divines, who, upon a certain occasion familiar to 
all students of colonial history, made an enforced excursion down 
Massachusetts Bay, celebrate as among the great providential gifts 
to the Colony our deep sea fisheries : — 

" That glorious Bay, 
In which — those wonders of the deep — 
The mackerel swim, and porpoise play, 
And crabs and lobsters creep. 
Fisli of all kinds inhabit there, 
And swarm the dark abode ; 
Here halibut and liaddock are. 
And eels, and perch, and cod." 

And who of us, whose great privilege it has been to assist at these 
pious and festive commemorations of the Fathers on this conse- 
crated spot in former years, can forget the saint-like aspect, the 
serene presence, and the mellifluous voice of another divine of a 
later age, the worthy successor of John Robinson and Elder 



THE DINNER. 141 

Brewster, the Reverend Dr. Kendall, who always on these occa- 
sions, in his fervent thanksgivings to Almighty God, gratefully 
recognized His good jjrovidence, " through wliich our Pilgrim an- 
cestors were fed, not with the manna of the wilderness, but from 
the abundance of the sea and the treasures hid in the sand." ^^ 

Why, Mr. President, what have we done in Massachusetts since 
the Province CJiarter united the two Colonies under one jurisdiction, 
but to hang up as our legislative emblem, in the dome of the 
Representatives' Hall, that marvellous Cod, whose vigilant and 
unwinking eye keeps watch over our legislators, to see that, 
when they rise upon its floor, " the tongues and sounds " which 
reach his ear shall never fail in a patriotic advocacy of the great 
intei'ests of Education and the Fisheries ? It is doubtless to 
his inspiration and influence that we are indebted for all the 
voluminous legislation which has been embodied in so many 
" Acts in addition to the Acts entitled the Acts for the Protection of 
Alewives in Taunton Great River," — and for the more recent cre- 
ation of a Commission to restore to their old haunts, in our inland 
streams and rivers, the trout, the bass, the salmon, and the shad, so 
ruthlessly driven from them by the improvidence which, in stimu- 
lating our manufacturing enterprises, had sacrificed the generous 
bounty of nature to the insatiate greed of man. To the same 
source, possibly, we may attribute the honorable distinction of my 
townsmen of New Bedford, the hardy and adventurous fishermen, 
who by the banks of Buzzard's Bay " sit on a rock and bob for 
whale," in having established the first Free Public Library in the 
Commonwealth, as a municipal institution, supported by the volun- 
tary taxation of the people. 

Thus we see how Education and the Fisheries have gone on as 
mutual supports of each other through all our history : the one, from 
the earliest humble free school of the Colony to the eldest and 
most distinguished University of the country ; and the other, in the 
language of old Cowley, " from minnows, to those living islands, 
whales." 

No less conspicuous, Mr. President, if you will permit me to jiur- 
sue the analogy one step farther, has been the political importance 
of the Fisheries to all the highest interests of the country. Who 
that is familiar with our history can forget the stress that was laid 
upon their maintenance, and their preservation from foreign en- 
croachment, by the great " Colossus of Independence," John Adams, 



142 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

at the close of the war of the Revolution, — or how his illustrious 
son and successor, John Quincy Adams, as one of the Commission- 
ers at Ghent, enforced their claims to international recognition and 
observance after the last conflict of arms between the two nations in 
the War of 1812? And here certainly, on this spot and on this 
day of commemoration, I should scarcely be justified in not refer- 
ring to a period earlier than either of these, when a gallant son of 
our own Plymouth, a lineal descendant of that Governor Winslow 
whose career has been so fitly and beautifully sketched by the Orator 
of the Day, led the brave sons of the Colony to the field, among the 
first of that series of momentous conflicts between the mother coun- 
try and her ancient foe, for possession of the military posts with 
which the latter had dotted the continent from the St. Johns to the 
Mississippi, — conflicts that had their origin in the value which 
both powers attached to the Fisheries, and which resulted in settling 
the question whether Protestant England or Catholic France was 
to be the dominating power in the Colonies of North America.^* It 
is not, I think, too much to say, that it was to these colonists of 
New Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay that Great Bi-itain owed all 
her power to set up any rights whatever to these Fisheries, in her 
assertion of which she has treated their descendants, the present 
hardy fishermen of New England, with so harsh and ungenerous a 
policy. 

Let us hope, Mr. President, that fair and just diplomacy, under 
the guidance of President Grant, who as a successful and illustri- 
ous soldier knows how to value the blessings of Peace, and his able 
and accomplished Secretary of State, whose name of itself ought to 
be a guarantee of success in maintaining the rights of our Fish-ermen, 
will soon bring this vexed and vexatious question to a peaceful, 
honorable, and satisfactory solution. At all events, and in any 
event, let it be understood at Washington and in Downing Street, as 
it is in New England, that we are never to surrender, upon any 
foreign claim or through any foreign interference, any part of this 
great interest, the first-fruits of which were devoted by our Fathers 
to the support of free schools and the education of the whole 
people. 

Let me close, sir, with the lines of the same " sweet singer," 
whom I have already quoted as " the Poet of the Pilgrims." His 
words are familiar to us all : — 



THE DINNER. 143 

" God bless those ancient Puritans, 

Their lot was hard enough. 
But honest hearts make iron arms, 

And tender maids are tough. 
So Love and Faith have formed and fed 

Our true-born Yankee stuff, 
And we'll keep the kernel in the shell, 

The British found so rough." 

The Peesident. — I wish to say here — both by way of 
an apology to those gentlemen who have not yet spoken, to 
which I trust those whom you have already had the pleasure 
of hearing will close their ears, and a gentle reminder to the 
audience — that I have had too much to do with political meet- 
ings heretofore to put forward all my best speakers in the early 
part of the evening. We have an abundance of eloquent 
gentlemen in reserve. I have received by telegraph, from 
the New England Society of New York, the following : — 

The New England Society in the City of New York to the Pilgrim Society 
at Plymouth, Greeting : 

"We have redeemed the original purpose of the passengers of the 
" Mayflower " to land at the mouth of the Hudson, and hope to 
make up for lost time, and the treachery which led them astray. 
We have reclaimed a fair portion of this wilderness, and hope in 
another two hundred and fifty years to win back the whole. 

J. H. Choate, 

President of the New England Society in Neio York. 

The President. — I propose in response, — 

The Sons of New England in New York : "Whatever they have reclaimed 
is due to the principles which they have carried with them from the churches 
and schools and homes of New England ; whatever they may hereafter win 
will be due to the fidelity with which these principles are maintained and 
perpetuated. 

The President. — I will give you as the next toast, — 

The Character and Ideas of the Pilgrims : The moulding forces of the Nation. 

And introduce to you Rev. Joseph P. Thompson, D.D., 

of New York. 



144 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 



SPEECH OF REV. J. P. THOMPSON. 

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, — The encouragement held 
out in the closing words of Mr. Davis may be accepted as an as- 
surance that some two or three speakers are to come after me, who 
constitute his reserve. For myself, I count it a happy provision for 
a speaker when his audience cannot possibly get away. It is no use 
for you to try to play the Pilgrim just now to the extent of becoming 
separatists ; for if you should get out of this " Establishment," where 
in the world would you go to ? You cannot possibly start till the 
train is ready, and the train will not leave till you have heard those 
admirable speakei's who are to follow me. 

What a wonderful day this has been ! Rich beyond expression 
are the treasures that we shall carry away with us. If we came here 
to be instructed, those of us who thought ourselves most familiar with 
this story, those of us who have told it over and over again, have yet 
learned somethino; new from the beautiful settinor in which it was 
presented to us in the church to-day. If we came here for senti- 
ment, how every fountain of feeling within us was unlocked at the 
first by the rich glory of this wintry sun shining its welcome upon 
us, and then by the stirring words, the glowing sentiments, the noble 
thoughts of the Orator ! If we came here for the reviving of associ- 
ations, how every memory has been quickened by the speakers to 
whom we have listened at this table, and by all the incidents of the 
day ! And yet, enriched as we are, I shall be happy for one, and I 
think we may all count ourselves happy, if we can carry away with 
us, as the last total imjjression of this Jubilee, the impression which 
was left upon us at the close of the oration, and which is revived in 
the sentiment just read, that the character of the Pilgrims, the char- 
acter in which their ideas were rooted, from which those ideas 
si^rang, has been the moulding force in this Nation, and must be con- 
served by us for posterity. 

I say it is well to be brought back to this last great thought to 
carry away with us ; for when we are stirred to the depths with 
sympathetic emotions, it is important that we expend our symjjathy 
at the most effective point, and do not fall into the mistake of the 
good lady who went to Mount Vernon. The attendant at the place 
found a lady weeping most bitterly and audibly, with her handker- 
chief at her eyes. He stepped up to her and said, " Madam, have 
you lost any thing ? " " No, sir," she sobbed. " Are you in any 



THE DINNER. 145 

trouble, madam ? " " No, sir," she sobbed again. " I saw you 
weeping." " Ah ! " said she, " how can one help weeping at the 
grave of the Father of his Country ? " " Oh, indeed, madam," said 
he, " that 's it ! The tomb's over yonder. This is the ice-house." 
I came here expecting to weep, and certainly expecting to find Ply- 
mouth at this time of the year a good deal of an ice-house. I am 
disappointed in that respect most happily ; and now we have been 
brought so near to the root-idea of the Pilgrim movement that we 
shall expend our sympathy where it should go, at the point from 
which we shall receive in return magnetic influences to carry with 
us to our homes. 

That word " magnetic "' brings up in my mind an association with 
which I may in a word eiiforce the sentiment. The last time I was 
at Plymouth — a year ago last summer — I was struck more than 
ever before in my life with the feebleness, the transitoriness, of even 
the strongest physical impressions in comparison with moral ideas 
and forces. They were just at that moment bringing into Duxbury 
the French cable, which happens to-day to be our sole dependence 
for news from abroad. You all remember the laying of the first 
Atlantic cable : what enthusiasm was kindled upon two continents ; 
how our country was ablaze with illuminations and bonfires ; how 
the air palpitated with the booming of cannon and the ringing of 
bells. It was the great event then of the century. The same thing 
identically was repeated here at Duxbury ; yet no man so much 
as took off his hat in honor of the occasion ; — so soon do great physi- 
cal and material events and interests cease to impress us. It led me to 
say to myself at that time, " Suppose the grandest miracle in the 
history of the world, the Resurrection, had been repeated every 
Sunday, it would soon have ceased to make any more impression 
than the returning of friends from a journey. It was not the physi- 
cal resurrection : it was the life that was behind it and in it, and 
the life immortal that it prophesies to all the dying generations of 
men, that give to the resurrection of Christ its undying power." So 
it was not the laying of the Atlantic cable, with all the wondrous 
care of machinery, and all the mighty agencies of steam, and all the 
nice calculations of mathematics, that could make that event a per- 
petual wonder or awaken interest in the repetition : the true miracle 
is the silent throbbing of that invisible force beneath the sea, all 
untouched by the waves, unbroken by the mountains of the deep 
that lie over it ; and greater than any physical impression made by 

19 



146 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

the forces of nature are the moral impressions made by the force of 
principle. That power of character which came to Plymouth two 
hundred and fifty years ago is more potent to-day than the mysterious 
force of nature, made almost instinct with intelligence, that throbs 
in sixty seconds through the ocean that the " Mayflower " was sixty 
days in crossing. 

To turn it in another way : suppose the men who came over here 
at the first had brought with them not ideas, not principles, but the 
cable and the railway, what manner of nation would this have 
proved to be ? Suppose in those days there had been such facility 
of transportation that all Erin could have been shipped over upon this 
colony, what manner of nation would this have been ? Nay, it was 
necessary that first of all this Nation should be grounded in charac- 
ter — character, I say. It is not ideas alone. It is barely twenty years 
since Frenchmen put out the most vaporing ideas of liberty, equality, 
and fraternity, on paper, in poems, in speeches, everywhere. But what 
is France to-day ? Without a principle, without a flag, without a gov- 
ernment, without a cause, without a name, without one rallying cry, 
such as is wont to appeal to the heart of a great nation, to save her 
from the crushing destruction that has come upon her. Why ? Be- 
cause of that process of systematic demoralization to which she has 
been subjected through so many years. France lost her Pilgrim ele- 
ment in the expulsion and massacre of the Huguenots ; and her no- 
blest political aspirations have lacked the moral strength that comes 
of a pure and vigorous religious faith. No strong and stable institu- 
tions of freedom can be founded upon a mere declaration of the rights 
of man among his fellows. But the men who came hither brought the 
fundamental conception of man restored as the child of God. Per- 
sonality was their root-idea^ the personal soul linked to the personal 
God ; and this was greater than King or Parliament, this was greater 
than Church or Bishop, and no combination against this could ever 
crush it. And from that root-idea, — not a general notion of man's 
rights as a citizen, but the religious notion of man's worth as a soul, 
and of man's worth as a child of God, — sprang the other idea of mu- 
tual recognition, each soul to be respected by every other soul ; and - 
hence the Compact. And from this came also the idea of kingship 
and priesthood unto God, pertaining to each personality on board that 
ship ; and hence the free and equal Church. Thus it was that they laid 
here upon this new shore, upon the borders of this wilderness, the 
foundation of a nation of moral forces ; and when our stern conflict 



THE DINNER. 147 

came, it was the revival of those moral forces that saved the Nation. 
So long as slavery was restricted to a certain section of the country, 
we might deplore it, our humanity might be touched : it did not 
reach our consciences. But when the attempt was made to turn 
every man and woman of us into slave-catchers ; when the attempt 
was made to turn tlie territory of this Nation into a soil for the ex- 
tension of slavery, then conscience, the old Pilgrim conscience, the 
idea of the human soul and its worth, was stirred and roused ; and 
that it was that at length purified and restored and built the Nation. 
So must it be in whatever conflicts lie before us. The true growth of 
the Nation is not measured by acres of grain or miles of railway : it 
must grow by moral ideas and force of character, grow by hugging 
as its life the principles established here in the Pilgrim character. 
So great vitality has that character, even when transplanted, that the 
sons of the Pilgrims may hope, according to the foreshadowings of 
my respected and honored friend, the President of the New York 
Society, at last to win back New York itself to justice and virtue. 

The President at this period of the dinner stated that it 
was now a quarter of seven o'clock, and that an express 
train would leave for Boston at twenty minutes past seven, 
making no stop : and an accommodation train at half-past 
seven, stopping at all the way stations. 

The President. — The next toast which I propose is — 

Reliyious Toleration : First exemplified in the treatment of Roger Williams 
by the Pilgrims of Plymouth. 

I have the h<^nor of introducing to you Hon. Charles S. 
Bradley, of Rhode Island. 

SPEECH OF HON. CHARLES S. BRADLEY. 

Mr. Chairman^ Ladies and Gentlemen, — You kindly, sir, on 
Monday last, suggested to me that, coming from Rhode Island, I 
should say a word about Roger Williams on this occasion. 

I took some notes from his writings that I might bring you some 
words from Roger Williams himself; but, at this late hour and in 
this dim light, I find I cannot read them. Will you allow me, 
therefore, with but an imperfect recollection of them, to give utter- 
ance for a moment to some of those feelings with which upon this 
theme the heart of every Rhode Islander is full ? 



148 



PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 



Is it not well, sir, as we assemble at the end of this first 
quarter of a thousand years, to commemorate the Landing of the 
Pilgrims, whose crowning glory it was that they sought and found 
upon these Western shores, in the words of the closing line of the 
hymn we have just heard, — 

" Freedom to worship God " 1 — 

Indeed, sir, it is well at this time to remember him, once living here 
with your forefathers, ever their neighbor and friend, whom your 
Orator of to-day recognized as " the apostle of soul freedom." 

We do not forget the struggles, the controversies, the antagon- 
isms of those early days. We of Rhode Island also remember how 
our founder, dwelling there apart (for of him, as of his friend Mil- 
ton, it may be said, — 

" Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart"), — 

how with generous justice he felt and thought and wrote of your 
forefathers of the Plymouth Colony : " Of the letter from my 
ancient friend, Mr. Winslow, then Governor of Plymouth, pro- 
fessing his own and others' love and respect to me, yet lovingly 
advising me (since I was fallen into the edge of their bounds, and 
they were loath to displease the Bay) to remove but to the other 
side of the water ; and then he said I had the country free before 
me, and might be as free as themselves, and we should be loving 
neighbors together; that the then prudent and godly Governor, 
Mr. Bradford, and others of his godly council, said that I should 
not be molested nor tossed up and down again while they had 
breath in their bodies," and " that great and pious soul, Mr. Win- 
slow, melted and visited me at Providence, and put a piece of gold 
into the hands of my wife for our supply." And even of the 
Governor of the Massachusetts Bay he writes : " It pleased the 
Most High to direct my steps into this Bay by the loving private 
advice of the ever-honored soul, the grandfather, Mr. John Win- 
throp, who, though he was carried with the stream for my banish- 
ment, yet he tenderly loved me to his last breath." ^ 
Again Williams writes : " I took his prudent motion as a hint 
and voice from God ; and, waiving all other thoughts and motions, 
I steered my course from Salem — though in winter snow, which I 
feel yet — into these parts wherein I may say ' Peniel,' that is, I 
have seen the face of God." 



THE DINNER. 149 

It was a fiue thought of the descendant of that Winthrop, in his 
oration to-day, that the separate strains and seeming discords of sin- 
cere seekers of truth on earth may be blended into 2:»erfect harmony 
in the eternal ear. 

Our forefathers were of kingly nature ; and amid all that was 
local and personal, and sharing the infirmities of humanity, they 
could recognize, respect, and tenderly love each other to their last 
breath. May not their controversies [Roger Williams termed his 
works " a musick not fitted to your eares, but to your hearts "] be 
for us also, at this distant time, blended into harmony by the one 
great purpose of their lives ? 

Roger Williams, after long wanderings by sea and land, at last 
found rest for himself and his companions at the head of Narragan- 
sett Bay. He says : " Having, in a sense of God's merciful provi- 
dence to me in my distress called the place Providence, I desired it 
might be a shelter for persons distressed for conscience. I then 
considered the condition of divers of my countrymen." Considering 
their condition, he divided his property among them. How little 
could he have foreseen the prosperity of which that gift was the 
corner-stone ! — that " the place Providence " would become, among 
all the crowding cities of New England, second to but one ; that 
throughout his little colony the inventive brain and cunning hand 
would make every waterfall, tumbling down the rocks, minister 
more to the wants of men than the broad, rich prairie of the West. 
Her growth reminds one of the quaint words of Williams, as 
applied to another refuge for the distressed : " This confluence of 
the persecuted, by God's most gracious coming with them, drew 
boats, drew trade, drew shipping, and that so mightily in so short 
a time that shipping, trade, wealth, greatness, honor, appeared to 
fall as out of heaven in a crown or garland upon the head of this 
poor fisher town." 

But it is not in this sequence of his acts that we find Roger 
Williams's glory. It is that, under his auspices and for the first 
time in the history of our race, a civil State was founded upon the 
doctrine of soul liberty. The idea is expressed in the limitation 
upon the civil compact made by the settlers of Providence in a 
few simple words, simple and expressive as that description which 
our Orator to-day cited of the first Sabbath rest of the Pilgrims on 
yonder island. 

The compact which founded the State was binding " only in civil 



150 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

things." The limitation at the end of the compact was the impas- 
sable barrier which terminated the power of the State. This com- 
pact was made by the " masters of families." In the breaking 
light of new dispensations (by some further Constitutional Amend- 
ment, Senator Wilson) are such powers soon to be exei'cised by 
those whom, in our day, masters of families themselves obey ? 

Roger Williams understood the necessity and the limit of civil 
government. He understood that, in material matters, physical 
power is the appointed medium of authority ; that we must, from 
our very nature, have in practical life either — to use his own 
words — "the law of judges and justices of the peace in courts of 
peace, or the law of arms, the sword and blood." For practical 
wisdom, law indeed below ; but above, — for the aspirations of the 
soul, — liberty only ! 

This thought was not born to mankind in the brain of Roger 
Williams. The illumination of which my friend. Mi*. Hillard, has 
just spoken with such beauty and truth, did not shine on his face 
only. Such partiality to one above his fellows does not seem — 
reverently be it spoken — to be God's method. The light strikes 
first upon all the mountain peaks. It kindles the vision of poets 
and philosophers, of sages and Christians. It comes slowly down to 
us men of affairs, — may I say. Governor Clifford, to governors and 
judges ? — and becomes the common light and property of all men. 
This doctrine of Roger Williams is found all through history in 
illuminated minds. Even the heathen poet, speaking of the golden 
age, says, — 

" Sponte sua, sine lege, fidem rectumque colebat." 
The dark and energetic TertuUian says of the Christian faith, — 
" Sponte suscipi debeat, non vi." 

Our Orator of to-day has quoted from the lips of a Roman 
Catholic, the President of the States General of Holland, when the 
forefathers were there, in an address to that body, the same grand 
doctrine. It is heard in the sounding march of Milton's prose. — r 
Jeremy Taylor once ascended that mount of vision. It comes froni 
many an humbler voice and pen. In earlier times, it is found in 
their first confession of faith by the Baptists, to their honor be it 
said. It was cherished by many of our Pilgrim and Puritan 
Fathers. Toleration was practised by Friends and Catholics alike 
on this Western shore. Roger Williams's writings were chiefly 



THE DINNER. 151 

devoted to the vindication of the rights of conscience, — to soul 
liberty. In ponderous volumes, he discusses the " Bloudy Tenent 
of Persecution for Cause of Conscience " as " contrary to divine 
and human testimonies ; " and, while earnestly seeking after some 
Church or form wherein his profound convictions of Bible trutli 
might find rest, he grew stronger and clearer in his denial of " the 
power of the civill sword in spirituals." To this conviction he 
gave up every thing but life, and that was ever ready for tlie sacri- 
fice ; upon this doctrine he founded his State. 

Having established a compact, securing this right, in the wilds 
of America, Roger Williams crossed the ocean to obtain for it the 
sanction of the English monarch. Scholar and courtier as he was, 
a sincere and earnest nature always and everywhere, he obtained 
" the King's extraordinary favor to this colony as being a banished 
one, in which His Majesty declared himself that he would experi- 
ment whether civil government could consist with such liberty of 
conscience." 

The experiment was a success, — successful in the place of its 
origin, the State beneath whose greensward he sleeps, and which 
has clung with unfaltering fidelity to the principle. It was adopted 
by State after State, — embodied in the Constitution of the United 
States, which has overarched our prosperity like the protecting 
heavens. And in our day the great doctrine that civil government 
shall not be the mere minister of ecclesiastical power finds a home 
and ascendency even in Rome itself. 

In another department in which Roger Williams is entitled to 
our grateful remembrance, he stood alone. It was, in liis own 
simple phrase, " his soul's desire to do the natives good, and to that 
end to learn their language." He says, " God was pleased to give 
me a patient, painful spirit to lodge with them in their filthy, smoky 
holes, even when I lived at Plymouth and Salem, to gain their 
tongue." The key to their language he has given us, first compiled 
in those weary voyages across the Atlantic, when he sought and 
found a monarch's charter for religious freedom. 

Thus living with the Indian and seeking his welfare, they under- 
stood each other. He bore in the presence of the Indian, as in that 
of the monarch, character, which, as Dr. Thompson has just truly 
told us, is the vital force. From it come ideas, institutions, influ- 
ence. By that character he obtained their confidence ; and when he 
came, a wanderer, to the shores of the Narragansett, he received 



152 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

from their kings, Miantonomi and Canonicus (who distrusted the 
English), for himself and comrades, what money alone could not 
have purchased, — a home and a welcome. 

That confidence and character did more : they saved the exist- 
ence of New England. When the Pequots were soliciting the 
alliance of the Narragansetts with their five or six thousand war- 
riors, for the extermination of the white race, Roger Williams 
makes his way alone, in an open boat, to the Indian councils, and 
remained for days and nights among those savages, the only repre- 
sentative of his race. 

Rarely in human history do great events so depend upon a 
single man. By his knowledge of the Indians and their language, 
and through their confidence in him, he was enabled, under God, to 
avert the alliance. The whites, with their Indian allies, overcame 
the Pequots. Forty years of peace ensued, and the infant colonies 
grew to the stature and vigor of manhood. Had Roger Williams 
failed in that emergency, the life of our New England would have 
been nipped in the bud : French colonization would have occupied 
these shores, with what results the tragedies in Europe to-day dis- 
close. But, sir, we must leave Roger Williams and the forefathers. 

We congratulate you that you live here on the eastern coast of 
our New England, with its clear bright sea and sparkling air, fit 
nursery for men. To us is given, on its southern coast, that island 
called by the Indians Aquidneck, the Isle of Peace. Her beautiful 
shores are now married to civilized life, — the vast and tranquil 
ocean lingers lovingly around her, — above her the heavens bend in 
magical and evei'-changing hues of beauty, and " the river in the 
sea," born in the tropics, freighted with their fragrance, brings to 
those shores with its balmy breath — 

" An ampler ether, a diviner air." 

We welcome you to our shores. — We accept your welcome here. 
May we ever unite in commemorating the worth of the past, and 
receive new inspiration for the present and the future. 

The President. — I have a sentiment to which the Hon. 
George B. Loring. of Salem, was to have responded ; but 
he is necessarily absent. It is — 

The Colony of Cape Ann: The twin sister of the Colony of Plymouth. 



THE DINNER. 153 

I have also a sentiment in honor of" the Commonwealth of 
Massacliusetts, to which Governor Claflin was to have re- 
sponded ; but he writes that he is too ill to be present : — 

The Nuptials of 1692, the Union of Massachusetts and the Old Colomj : Their 
children inhabit every zone ; no quarrels have ever alienated them ; no 
divorce can separate them. 

Governor Claflin telegraphs me the following toast : — 

The Pilgrims did not anticipate the results of the principles they estab- 
lislied : may their descendants never in the joy of fruition forsake or forget 
them . 

I have also a sentiment to which Hon. Charles Francis 
Adams was to have responded, but he was obliged to leave at 
an early hour : — 

The Mother Country : She maintains the strength of her Government by 
yielding to the demands of a people inoculated with the principles of our 
Fathers, so faithfully illustrated by our representatives at her Court. 

The President. — I give as the next sentiment, — 

The honored Gleaners of all that is loise and instructive in the past : Doubly 
honored when devoted, through long and active lives, to the great com- 
mercial and agricultural interests of the State. 

SPEECH OF HON. MARSHALL P. WILDER, 

PRESIDENT OF THE NEW ENGLAND HISTORIC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY. 

3Ir. President, and Ladies and Gentlemen^ — I thank you, sir, 
for the kind invitation extended to me to be present on this most 
interesting occasion. But amidst the beautiful flowers of rhetoric 
which have bloomed so abundantly around us to-day, and the rich 
fruits of research of which we have partaken, there is but little for 
me to offer to this assembly. 

You have called on me, sir, to answer for the New England 
Historic-Genealogical Society, which I have the honor to repre- 
sent. I am happy to be here, and to respond in her behalf; for it 
is the object of this Association to treasure up and preserve the 
history of the forefathers and their descendants, and to transmit it 
to future generations. ♦ 

And, sir, I never hear the name of old Plymouth mentioned but 
I feel the most profound veneration for the Pilgrim Fathers, who 
here laid the broad foundations of this great Republic, — who here, 

20 



154 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

amidst tears, prayers, and sufferings, planted the germs of a civiliza- 
tion, which has budded, blossomed, and borne fruit in every civilized 
portion of the globe, — who here established those principles which 
have sustHined our government and made our country what it is ; 
principles which are fast revolutionizing the nations of the Old 
World, and which, we believe, ai'e destined ultimately to regenerate 
the kingdoms of this earth. 

But the thought which impresses me to-day is the amazing prog- 
ress in science, art, and in every thing that pertains to the happi- 
ness of the human family, since the landing of our Fathers on 
these shores. 

With what anticipation and exultation would our Fathers have 
looked forward, could they have seen, as we now see, the great 
future, all to them unknown, of the colony which they were plant- 
ing? How great the changes that have taken place since that 
day ! Then no village bell chimed for church or school, no temple 
for worship, save the " sounding aisles of the dim woods," canopied 
by the blue ether above : now our cities, towns, and villages rise 
as by magic, and adorn our hill-sides and broad valleys ; and now 
our churches, schools, and benevolent institutions, like manna from 
the skies, are scattered broadcast throughout the length and breadth 
of our happy land. 

Then the " Mayflower " crept timidly along this shore, waiting 
for wind and tide ; now our gigantic steamers dash up our mighty 
rivers, and across lakes and oceans, despite of wind or tide or 
storm. 

Then the voice of our Fathers echoed in the dark forest only to 
return and die upon the shore ; now the voice of their descendants 
is heard in every language and land, and to-day, through the genius 
of their sons, it speaks, with lightning flash, throughout the earth. 

Then the track of the wild beast and the trail of the wild man 
had only furrowed the surface of our continent : now a net-work 
of intercommunication, with arteries scarcely less numerous than 
those of the human system, encompasses and covers our broad 
domain ; and through it flow the trade, commerce, and intercourse, 
not only of our own people, but it furnishes also a great highway 
across the continent for the people of all other nations and all time. 
With what surprise would that little Pilgrim baud have looked 
forward, could they have anticipated that, in two and a half cen- 
turies, their population of a hundred souls, together with the little 



THE DINNER. 155 

colony in Virginia, and a handful of Dutch on the shores of the 
Hudson, would be multiplied into forty millions ! or, still more 
wonderful, could they have passed with us to-day by the same old 
Rock, while celebrating the fifth jubilee of their landing, and look 
forward, as we now look, to the sixth jubilee, when, according to 
the last estimates, that popukation will be increased to one hundred 
millions of souls. AVould they not say, " Truly this work is marvel- 
lous in our eyes : a little one has become a thousand, and a small 
one a great nation " ? 

And how would they have rejoiced, when partaking of their 
scanty meal of five kernels of corn, or when rendering special 
thanks for the annual crop of twenty bushels of corn and six bushels 
of oats and peas, — how would their voices have broken forth in 
hallelujahs of thanksgiving to the God of harvest, could they have 
had a vision of the thousand millions of bushels in our annual crop, 
— a crop of grain sufficient to give a bushel each to every man, 
Avoman, and child on the face of the globe ! 

Plow would the soul of the generous Peregrine White have 
swelled with joy, had he known, when planting his apple-tree at 
Marshfield, that this fruit would become an article of daily food, or 
that his orchard of one tree would be magnified into orchards of 
twenty thousand or more trees of a single variety ! And although 
it is recorded that Governor Winthrop some years after had a 
good store of pippins, yet neither of these gentlemen could have 
foreseen the influence of their example in New England, not to 
speak of three counties in New York that produce annually five 
hundred thousand barrels of ajiples, or the annual crop of our 
country, sufficient to regale the appetites of every human being in 
the United States. Think what Governor Endicott would have 
said, if he had been told that the planting of his first pear-tree 
at Salem would be multi[)lied into thousands of orchards, some 
of which in our own State contain eight hundred or one thousand 
varieties, all better than his own ; and that, instead of being trained 
and nursed in the gardens of the opulent, this fruit should be enjoyed 
by the western pioneer on the Pacific coast as well as by the eastern 
magistrate, from whence we have received, within a few days, 
pears weighing four pounds and nine ounces. 

But I must not prolong this train of thought. The more I con- 
template the history of this country, the more I reflect on the great 
moral and political events which have elevated our nation to 



156 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

heaven in point of privilege, the more I am impressed with the 
obligation to do something for its advancement, something to aid 
this grand march of improvement. And how sublime the record 
of the past ! The discovery of this continent, how momentous in 
its results ! The development of its resources, how wonderful and 
grand ! The exaiuple of its people, how great and good ! 

No event since the birth of our blessed Saviour has been fraught 
with such mighty issues as the mission of our Fathers to this land. 
And how would their souls have been moved with joy and thanks- 
giving, could they, when kindling the glimmering fires of civil and 
religious freedom, have had but a glimpse of the bow of promise 
which irradiates the present day ! Already the day-star of glory 
has arisen ; and, like that which led the wise men of the East, cul- 
minating over Judea's plains, the star of empire, leading the nations 
of the earth, finds its meridian height over this western world. How 
marvellous the story ! It is only one-fourth of a thousand years 
since the eagle of liberty first rested her foot on our x-ock-bound 
coast, — only two hundred and fifty years ! And now to-day she 
stands perched on yonder mountain peak, stretching her broad 
wings from sea to sea, and proclaiming to the uttermost ends of the 
earth, Liberty of Conscience ! Fkeedom for all ! Servitude 

FOR NONE ! 

The next toast will be — 

The Old Town of Boston : Though Plymouth had ten years the start, she 
is not annoyed at being distanced in the race ; for she knows the jockey who 
wins is an Okl Colony Boy. 

I have the pleasure of introducing to you Hon. N. B. 
Shurtleff, Mayor of Boston, whom we claim as a son of 
the Old Colony. 

RESPONSE OF HON. N. B. SHURTLEFF. 

31): President, Ladies and Gentlemen, — For remembering so 
kindly the city of Boston on this pleasant occasion, my fellow-citizenSj^ 
who are so largely represented here to-day, will be very grateful to 
the good people of this ancient town, — descendants of renowned 
worthies, the forefathers of the good old Colony of New Plymouth. 
I am well pleased also that you recognize me as one closely allied 
to the Old Colony people ; for, although a native of Boston, I feel 



THE DINNER. 157 

proud that every one of my American ancestors were born within 
the jurisdiction of the Plymouth Colony, and that every drop of 
blood that flows through my veins comes directly from the Pilgrims. 

On this, the shortest day of the year, I have come, as a humble 
Pilgrim, to the hallowed homes of my revered ancestors to spend 
with you the longest night our season affords, in order to recall the 
mighty deeds which they of old performed, and to renew with you 
my fealty to those principles that led them in such an inclement 
season of the year to brave the dangers of an almost unknown 
ocean, to establish a new home on inhospitable shores, and a colony 
determined on self-government, — that surest guarantee of civil and 
religious liberty ; and for the enactment of laws, which they them- 
selves would make, enforce, and willingly obey ; and for the enjoy- 
ment of perfect freedom in religious worship, untrammelled by rules 
observances and usages inflicted by the persecutions of uncompi'omis- 
ing hierarchies. Here, on .this spot, made sacred by the sufferings, 
hardships, and endurances of the self-exiled Pilgrims, we have 
gathered together to commemorate the great event that occurred just 
two hundred and fifty years ago, and to pay our tribute of gratitude 
to those most estimable persons ; and, in viewing the places where 
they once dwelt, toiled, and worshipped, and in recalling to mind 
their virtues and good principles, to show our appreciation of their 
lives, character, and actions, and a proper regard for their memories. 
We have come to this particular place, that we may be able to re- 
joice at the excellence of these our Fathers in the very field of their 
early privations and labors, and to reciprocate congratulations that 
the grand object which they attained by coming to New England 
has been so faithfully preserved for our enjoyment. Let us be care- 
ful to preserve the good inheritance which our Fathers have left us, 
and let us transmit it unimpaired to the latest posterity, that coming 
generations may hail this natal day, as we do now, as that on which 
was born the freest of all the governments of the world. Forget 
not the pledges of that little compact of forty-one men, written per- 
haps in twenty lines and signed in Provincetown Harbor, — the first 
written constitution the world ever knew. More potent has been 
that simple instrument of only two hundred words than have been 
all the charters displayed on parchment, with emblazonry, and sanc- 
tioned by the broadest and greatest seals of princely potentates. 

When one comes to Plymouth, Mr. President, the first inquiry is 
for the landmarks of the olden time and the vestiges of the first- 



158 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

comers. Some of these have been shown us to-day, as we have 
passed over the roads and through the by-ways, once the accustomed 
walks of your venerated predecessors. We have paid our wonted 
passing respects to the soHtary old Rock that so opportunely served 
in 1G20 as a landing place for the Pilgrim voyagers, and as a monu- 
ment for all future time of one of the most memorable events in the 
history of our country. More enduring will be the fame, and the 
jjresence too, of that rough unsculptured boulder, than chiselled 
statue or lofty memorial of smoothly hammered ashler. As we 
marched by the water-side and beneath the sacred hillock that over- 
looks the placid waters of the harbor that so kindly bore upon its 
bosom the Pilgrim vessels, we have instinctively bowed our heads 
in filial veneration of the little band of adventurers who came to this 
spot two hundred and fifty years ago, and one-half of whom were 
gathered to their earthly rest beneath its sod during that dreadful 
first winter of the colonists of New Plymouth ^^ ; and as we trod our 
way through your Leyden Street, with its ancient dwellings, genial 
reminders of the pleasant days of the past, we could almost call back 
to their first " meersteads and garden plots" our well-beloved fore- 
fathers, and behold each with his family standing in his appointed 
lot. 

I had hoped, Mr. President, that you would have had sufficient time 
to have taken us around and shown more of your interesting memo- 
rials of the olden time. What recollections and associations of the 
past would have been thus awakened! Your old town brook, that 
afforded in days of yore a safe dockage for the Pilgrims' pinnace, 
and an abundance of the fsxmous good Old Colony staple that we are 
told could once run up to Billington Sea as easily as now down 
Taunton River ; the Pilgrim spring that supplied the temperate 
beverage of the first comers ; the hill at our south where first ap- 
peared aboriginal friendship, — these are marks of interest which we 
could have revisited with advantage as well as with antiquarian 
pleasure. From yonder sacred hill, where so peacefully repose the 
once active spirits of your town, you could have pointed out innu- 
merable objects of interest. Upon the brow of that eminence are^ 
gathered the mortal remains of worthies whose names are most 
indelibly fixed in our memories, and the remembrance of whom is 
always dearest in our thoughts. On this day, sir, our minds should 
be entirely given to the past ; and we all hope to be pardoned if we 
indulge somewhat personally in the glorious recollections of the 



THE DINNER. 159 

virtues of our predecessors. Recreant, indeed, sir, should we all 
be, wex-e we to forget on this occasion the great results that have 
emanated from the good principles, the noble daring, the patient 
sufferings, and the estimable attributes of our ancestry. 

I have come here to-day, my friends, to rejoice with you that the 
"May Flower," the " Fortune," and the "Ann" found their haven of 
rest on these shores; and however much we of Boston may admire 
and reverence the Puritan Fathers of the old Massachusetts Colony 
who founded our ancient metropolis, we are always willing, and at all 
times ready, to yield the palm to the Plymouth Pilgrims, who, plac- 
ing liberty of conscience high above all other things, first planted 
their hopes upon the soil where we are now congregated to do them 
just reverence. 

The President. — I propose as the last sentiment, — 

The Sons of New England hei/ond our Borders: Under wliatever flag they 
live, they illustrate and reflect with honor and pride Pilgrim ideas and Pil- 
grim principles. 

This sentiment was responded to by Hon. T. Sterry 
Hunt, President of the New England Society in Montreal. 

SPEECH OF HON. MR. HUNT. 

It is with great pleasure that I to-day visit for the first time a spot 
which from my childhood I have been taught to look upon as the 
birthplace not only of a nation, but of a new political and social 
order. With no less pleasure do I appear here among you at this 
banquet as the representative of the New England Society of Mon- 
treal. It might not seem necessary that I should bring with me 
any other credentials tlian those given me by my title of President 
of the Society, were it not that our Society has so enlarged its scope 
as to include Americans, not of New England birth, who may be resi- 
dents in Canada, and did I not wish to-day to glory in my New 
England birth and lineage, surely a pardonable pride on an occasion 
like the present. Under the old re(jlme in France, certain honors 
of the Court were accorded only to those who could prove a long 
descent from gentle blood, unraingled with any base plebeian stain, 
and who by heraldic laws were entitled to quarter the armorial bear- 
ings of so many Prankish barons or conquering crusaders. If in 
this land of ours, where all are sovereigns, we are to recognize any 
hereditary title of rank or distinction, it should be for such as can 



160 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

claim a descent from those brave Englishmen, who, through their 
faith in God and in the rights of man, conquered the wilderness, sub- 
dued savages, and built up on these shores our free institutions. For 
myself, a native of Connecticut, I can boast that for more than two 
hundred years my ancestors, on both sides, have been dwellers on 
New England soil, and, though not of the little band of the " May- 
flower," may claim a place among the forefathers of this Common- 
wealth and of Rhode Island. Although the pursuit of science has 
led me to spend some years of my life in Canada, '" my heart, un- 
travelled, fondly turns" to my home and that of my fathers ; and I 
come here to-day, a reverent pilgrim, feeling that earth has for me 
but one more hallowed spot than this. 

The sentiment which we have just heard from the chair recognizes 
the fact that the influences which have gone out from this centre have 
passed beyond the borders of our great Republic. It is significant 
that New England Societies exist in Montreal and Toronto ; but we 
must look farther and wider, if we would measure the extent of those 
influences in the British American Provinces, and in doing so must 
glance at a chapter in our history which is often lost sight of. 

Emerson has beautifully compared old England to the banyan-tree 
of the East, whose branches, touching the earth, take root and grow 
to be trees themselves. Grandest of all these offshoots was the 
bi'anch which, stretching far over the ocean, two hundred and fifty 
years since, took root in this seemingly sterile soil, and has since 
grown to be a mighty tree whose branches, in their turn, have planted 
themselves throughout our land, until they overshadow a continent. 
To-day, on the shores of the great lakes, in the valley of the Missis- 
sippi, and 

" Where the sun, with softer fires, 
Looks on the vast Pacific's sleep," 

beside the golden gate of the West, " the children of the Pilgrim 
sires " keep with us high festival beneath the shadow of that tree 
whose leaves are for the healing of the nation. 

But of the tree which struck root on Plymouth Rock, there is an 
offshoot beyond our border, about which I would say a few words 
to-day. There went out from New England, three generations ago, 
a colony of men, and of women too, who have since played in the 
history of this continent a part honorable alike to the land of their 
birth and the place of their voluntary exile. I speak of the expa- 
triated Tories of the Revolution, or, as they loved to call themselves, 



THE DINNER. 161 

the United Empire Loyalists. To-day, when the actors in the great 
drama of the War of our Independence have passed away, and 
the strifes and hatreds of that time are forgotten, a descendant of 
those who fought and conquered them may be permitted to speak a 
word in behalf of the old New England Loyalists and their children. 
Let me here say that a residence of many years in Canada has no 
whit diminished my love and reverence for the founders of the 
American Republic, whose names, whose cause, and whose honor I 
hold no less sacred than that of our Pilgrim forefathers. The logic 
of events has doubtless already taught many of the sons of the old 
Loyalists to regret the mistaken zeal and the errors of their ancestors ; 
yet it is not without pride that they look back to the sufferings 
and sacrifices of that band of adherents to the crown, who became 
exiles for conscience' sake. They were erring sons who went out 
from their father's house, but have after all proved themselves no un- 
worthy scions of the old stock. That they carried with them much 
of the spirit of their ancestors, the subsequent history of these self- 
exiled New Englanders has abundantly shown. It is not too much 
to say that what is most worthy of honor in the history of the English- 
speaking population of the British American Provinces is to be 
traced to the American Loyalists and their descendants, who left this 
country at the time of our War of Indejjendence. 

It is not an easy task for us to-day to put ourselves in the posi- 
tion of those men, after the experience of nearly a century has justi- 
fied the wisdom of our ancestors in resisting even to blood the 
authority of the Crown, that they might win for themselves and 
for their children a free press, free commerce, and the right of self- 
government. The patriots of the Revolution at first claimed no 
more than these, and demanded less of Great Britain than she has 
since accorded to those North American Colonies which still own 
her sway. We find, however, among the two thousand souls who 
at the time of the Revolution left the shores of Massachusetts, ad- 
herents to the Cx'own, a list of names which any cause might be 
proud to claim. They were, very many of them, of the best blood 
of New England, — men of every profession, jurists and divines as 
well as merchants and yeomen. No small proportion of the 
graduates of Harvard and Yale were among those who then sought 
a home on the banks of the St. Lawrence, or on the inhospitable 
shores of the Acadian provinces. These men were not altogether 
recreant to the spirit of their sires, though their love to the Crown, 

21 



162 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

and to the English Church, to which very many of them adhered, 
led them to cling to the British cause. They showed the ancient 
spirit by surrendering wealth, position, and friends, and betaking 
themselves t» a new land as their fathers had done before them. 

I may be permitted by a few examples to show the part which the 
Loyalists and their descendants have played in the country of their 
adoption, where their names have always stood foremost in law, in 
letters, and in statesmanship. I may name Jonathan Sewall, of 
Boston, the friend of John Adams, whose son was for many years 
Chief Justice of Lower Canada ; the late Sir Brenton Haliburton, 
jurist, historian, and humorist, a native of Rhode Island ; Sir John 
Wentworth, Governor of New Hampshire, and afterwards of Nova 
Scotia, whose descendants in Canada still inherit the great qualities 
of their race ; Upham, of Brookfield, a name and a family in honor 
both in Nova Scotia and in Massachusetts ; Coffin, of Boston, 
whose descendants ai'e prominent both in New Brunswick and in 
Canada ; Rovvth, of Salem, late Chief Justice of Newfoundland ; 
Jarvis, of Connecticut, who held a similar office ; AVinslow, of Ply- 
mouth, the orator of the day at our festival here one hundred years 
ago, afterwards judge and administrator of the government of New 
Brunswick.-^'' Putnam, Wetmore, Botsford, and Bliss, are names not 
less famous in the history of this colony ; and the grandson of the 
latter, the second judge of his name, descended from the AYilmots, a 
Loyalist family of Long Island, is now Governor of New Brunswick. 
Howe, President of the Federal Council, is the son of a Bostonian. 
Aylwin and Day, now ornaments of the Quebec Bar, are of the same 
good stock. 

If from the example of our Montreal New England Society I might 
enlarge my limits, so as to take in names from others of the old 
thirteen colonies, I could add the Robinsons, of Toronto, repre- 
sented by the late Chief Justice Sir John Beverley Robinson ; the 
Stuarts, of Quebec, descendants of the late Sir James Stuart ; the 
Ogdens and the Smiths, of New York ; Sir William Logan, son of 
a New York Loyalist ; Egerton Ryerson, the founder of the common 
school system of Upper Canada, whose father was from New Jersey ; 
and many others, whose names and titles to distinction would occupy 
us too long. The record is already sufficient to show that the New 
Englanders of to-day have no cause to be ashamed of the sons of the 
United Empire Loyalists. 

But I must not forget that it is not as their representative that I 



THE DINNER. 163 

appear before you on this occasion. Adventurous sons of New Eng- 
land have in the present generation contributed tlieir full share to 
develope in various directions the resources of the British American 
Provinces. In bringing forth the w^ealth of the forests and the 
mines, and in every branch of manufacture, New England skill and 
industry have been prominent, until the name of " Yankee " has there 
become synonymous with enterprise, thrift, and success. The Gov- 
ernment of the Dominion places no barrier to their political advance- 
ment ; and native Americans of Whig descent are to-day to be found 
in the House of Commons and in the Senate, side by side with the 
children of the old New England Tories. An American of New 
England name and lineage, Howland of New York, a successful 
merchant and a minister of finance, is now Governor of the Province 
of Ontario. 

And now to repeat a question often asked me, Wliat is the destiny 
of these British American Colonies ? The old imperial idea, which 
made the greatness of Rome, which is the strength of resuscitated 
Germany, and makes us to-day a great and strong Nation, is ap- 
parently losing its hold on the governing class in England. The 
policy of abandoning her foreign possessions now finds advocates 
among the statesmen of Great Britain ; and the dismantled fortresses 
of her North American Provinces, from which the last gun and the 
last soldier are being removed, tell us plainly that, for good or for 
evil, Britain is leaving the colonies to themselves. Meanwhile the 
vision of a great united empire rises before the eyes of Canadian 
statesmen, who dream of a new nation stretching to the northward of 
us from sea to sea. Such a conception shows a great progress in 
national life, and is fitted to call forth the best energies of the Cana- 
dian people. Of one thing we may be certain : that this great 
country, with its immense resources, has before it a noble future ; and 
that, whether as a new nationality or as a part of this great Republic, 
American ideas and New England virtues will always be found 
powerful influences in guiding and in shaping its destinies. 

The President. — It is now quarter past seven o'clock : 
the trains are ready ; and as I welcomed the coming, I now 
speed our parting, guests. 



THE BALL. 



'TT^HE programme of the Committee of Arrangements 
closed with a grand ball in the evening, in Davis Hall, 
which was attended by about four hundred ladies and gentle- 
men, and exceeded in brilliancy any thing of the kind ever 
before undertaken in Plymouth. The hall was brilliantly 
lighted, and decorated with good taste and judgment. The 
floor was covered with white canvas, and the entries and 
stairs were carpeted to* the outer door. In front of the 
gallery over the stage the date 1620, and at the opposite end 
of the hall the date 1870, were exhibited in jets of gas, 
adding much to the brilliancy of the scene. The names of 
Carver, Bradford, Winslow, Standish, White, Alden, 
Brewster, and Chilton, were displayed in green on each 
side of the two dates ; and portraits of Edward Winslow, 
JosiAH Winslow, Penelope Winslow, the wife of Josiah, 
John Winslow, George Washington, Ephraim Spooner, 
John Davis, James Thacher, John Trumbull, John 
Alden, and James Kendall, hung on the walls. Baskets 
of rich flowers were suspended from the columns, bearing in 
their fragrance constant testimony to the delicate taste with 
which the details of the programme were carried out. 

A coflTee-room was open from the beginning to the close of 
the ball ; and the supper-room, which was opened at twelve 
o'clock, was abundantly supplied until the last dance was 
finished. 



166 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

The music, furnished by Gilmore's Band, consisted of nine 
pieces, under the direction of Mr. John T. Baldwin as 
prompter ; and, under the careful management of the floor 
managers, the ball was conducted to a brilliant conclusion at 
about four o'clock in the morning. 

With the last strains of the music in Davis Hall, the Cele- 
bration closed ; and while those upon whom its labors and 
responsibilities rested congratulate themselves upon its suc- 
cessful consummation, all who participated in its ceremonies 
and festivities will remember with ever-increasing pleasure 
the Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Landing 
of the Pilgrims. 



APPENDIX. 



LETTERS IN REPLY TO INVITATIONS. 



Hon. Wm. T. Davis, Plymouth, 

Dkar Sir, — I am in receipt of your letter of the 12tli inst. 
inviting me to attend the Celebration of the Anniversary of the 
Landing of the Pilgrims. It would afford me great pleasure to be 
present upon an occasion of so much interest ; but it will be im- 
possible to Jeave the capital at that time, and I am compelled to 
decline your very cordial invitation. 

Respectfully yours, 

U.' S. Grant. 
Executive Mansion, Nov. 19th, 1870. 



Washington, Dec. 1, 1870. 
Mt dear Sir, — Gratifying as it would be to participate in 
your Celebration, I regret to have to reply that public duties here 
prevent the acceptance of the invitation with which I have been 
honored. 

Very truly yours, 

Schuyler Colfax. 
Hon. W. T. Davis. 



Department of State, 
Washington, Dec. 14, 1870. 
Messrs. Wm. T. Davis, Wm. H. Whitman, &c., Plymouth, Mass., Com- 
mittee of Arrangements. 

Gentlemen, — Your invitation to be i^resent at the Celebration of 
the Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Landing of the 
Pilgrims at Plymouth presents a temptation to which I would be 



168 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

glad to yield, but for the pressure of official duties which will re- 
quire my presence here. 

Accept, I beg you, my thanks for the invitation. 
I have the honor to be, 

Very respectfully yours, 

Hamilton Fish. 



Treasury Department, 
Office of the Secretary, Nov. 16, 1870. 

Dear Sir, — I regret to learn from your letter of the 12th inst. 
that I accidentally neglected to reply to your former letter extend- 
ing to me an invitation to be present at the Two Hundred and 
Fiftieth Anniversary of the Landing of the Pilgrims at Ply- 
mouth. 

I presented to the President your invitation to him, and I also 
said a word in favor of his accepting it ; but I inferred from his 
conversation, what I had reason to expect from my knowl- 
edge of aifairs, that he would feel compelled to decline. I fear, 
also, that it will not be in my power to be present, although I should 
esteem it a great privilege to unite with the descendants of the Pil- 
grims in celebrating their virtues and heroism. 

The invitations enclosed with your letter of the 12th inst. will be 
presented to the gentlemen for whom they are designed. 
I have the honor to be, 

Very respectfully, your obed't serv't, 

Geo. S. Boutwell. 
Hon. William T. Davis, 

Chairman of Committee of Arransrements. 



Department of the Interior, 
Washington, Nov. 23, 1870. 
Wm. T. Davis, Wm. H. Whitman, and others, 

Committee of Arrangements for Pilgrim Society. 

Gentlemen, — Your invitation to be present at the Celebration 
of the Landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, on the 21st of Decem- 
ber, is received. 

I regret to say that pressure of official business will compel me 
to decline your very cordial invitation. You have my best wishes 
for the success of the Celebration. 

Yours respectfully, 

C. Delano. 



APPENDIX. 169 

Post Office Department, 
Washington, D. C, Nov. 17th, 1870. 
William T. Davis, Esq. 

Dear Sir, — I have the honor to ackaowledge the receipt of 
your invitation to attend the Celebration of the Two Hundred and 
Fiftieth Anniversary of the Landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, 
and to return you my thanks. It is a source of much regret that 
official duties will oblige me to deny myself the pleasure of being 
present on that interesting occasion. 

Veiy respectfully yours, 

J. A. J. Creswell. 



Department of Justice, 

Washington, Dec. 6th, 1870. 
William T. Davis, Esq., and others. Committee of Arrangements of the 
Pilgrim Society, Plymouth, Mass. 

Gentlemen, — I have received, through Governor Boutwell, an 
invitation to your Celebration of the Two Hundred and Fiftieth 
Anniversary of the Landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, on Wed- 
nesday the 21st. 

It would give me great pleasure to participate in the celebration 
of so interesting an anniversary, — interesting both on account of 
the character of the men who landed at Plymouth in 1620, and of 
the important influence of that character in forming the literature, 
the politics, and the morals of the continent. But the necessity of 
being in Georgia at that time, if permitted by my duties to be ab- 
sent from the capital, will deny me the pleasure of accepting your 
invitation. 

Very respectfully yours, 

Amos T. Akerman. 



War Department, 
Washington, Nov. 17, 1870. 

Sir, — Please express to the members of your Committee my 
thanks for their invitation to the Celebration of the Pilgrim Society 
on the 21st December, and my regret that other engagements will 
interfere with its acceptance. 

Very respectfully, 

Your obedient servant, 

Wm. W. Belknap, 

Secretai-y of War. 
Hon. Wm. T. Davis. 

22 



170 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

United States Senate Chamber, 
Washington, Dec. 12th, 1870. 
Hon. William T. Davis. 

My dear Sir, — It is with great regret that I have to reply to 
your kind invitation to attend the Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anni- 
versary of the Landing of the Pilgi'ims, by saying that the pressure 
of engagements here will not permit me to be present. My reply 
would have been made at an earlier date, had not my anxiety to be 
with you on that occasion led me to delay, in the hope that I would 
be able to participate in your meeting, and pay, in person, my 
tribute to the venerable men and women who laid the foundation 
of the gloiy of New England. 

Wherever the law is respected, justice administered, civilization 
advancing, there are the sons of New England ; and as, with the 
westward course of empire, they climb the mountains and traverse 
the plains, they cast ever a longing look of tender remembrance 
towards the ancient seat. And it would have been especially 
agreeable to me, had it been possible, to be with you, and assure 
you of the respect which New England men in the West cherish 
for their birthplace ; how proudly they claim a share of its renown, 
and how anxiously they watch the course of its scholars and states- 
men in the progress of public affairs, for their inspiration and guid- 
ance. 

Very respectfully and truly yours, 

Matt. H. Carpenter. 



Washington, D. C, Dec. 19th, 1870. 

Gentlemen, — I had, until Saturday, expected to attend the 
memorial services to be held at Plymouth, on the 21st inst., to 
which you have honored me with an invitation ; but I now find I 
shall be held here by unavoidable public duties. 

I regret this exceedingly, as I had anticipated a gathering of 
gentlemen worthy of the men whose advent to these shores they 
propose to celebrate, and whom it would be a pleasure to me to 
meet. 

But I am sure the whole body of Pilgrims would rise up against 
me, should I neglect a service due to the living, to pay a tribute of 
homage and gratitude to the dead. The distinguishing peculiarity 
of the Pilgrims was their unswerving loyalty to duty. In this was 



APPENDIX. 171 

their pre-eminence over other emigrants of their or preceding ages. 
It was this which gave permanence and final success to the Colony. 

If they had been more skilled in state craft, and less in the creed 
of a faith which recognized the individual responsibility of man, the 
simple polity of their church would never have become the basis of 
the pure democracy of our town governments, which by combina- 
tion developed into the representative governments of the State and 
the Nation. The creed which held each responsible to God for his 
acts made liberty in the State as essential as in the Church, and 
demanded universal education as a right springing from man's 
responsibility. 

But the highest fruit of their faith was character. Constant 
meditation upon divine truths imparted an elevation to their lives 
which prepared them to meet and surmount the perils and hardships 
they encountered, and to hand down those transcendent qualities 
which have sustained and inspired their descendants through all the 
events of our unparalleled history. The sentiments of the Pilgrims 
have left an imperishable impress upon our national institutions 
and character. 

God grant that they may not cease to be held in grateful remem- 
brance by their children till their virtues shall cease to ennoble our 
national life. 

With thanks for your kind remembrance, and regrets that I can- 
not be with you, 

I am, with great respect, 

Your obedient servant, 

J. W. Patterson. 



HoRNELLSviLLE, N. Y., 28th Nov. 1870. 

My dear Sir, — Your two favors have followed me to this 

place, where I am for a day. It is with great regret that I abandon 

the opportunity with which you honor me. But my engagements 

at "Washington make it impossible for me to be with you on the 

Pilgrim Anniversary. The Senate will then be in session, and I 

never allow myself to leave my seat under any temptation. In 

this fidelity I try to imitate the Pilgrims. 

Faithfully yours, 

Charles Sumner. 
Hon. Wm. T. Davis. 



172 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

Washington, Nov. 22, 1870. 
Dear Sir, — I did my best to secure for you the attendance of 
the President. You will learn from his answer, when it comes, 
that it has been done in vain. 

I should be glad to go myself, if it were possible to get away 
from Washington at that time, of which there is no hope. 

Truly yours, 

J. C. B. Davis. 

Hon. Wm. T. Davis. 



Headquarters Army of the United States, 
Washington, D. C, Nov. 19, 1870. 

W. T. Davis, Esq., Plymouth, Mass. 

Dear Sir, — I have your very friendly letter of November 15, 
and assure you of my sense of the extreme honor you design for me, 
in connection with the proposed Celebration of the Two Hundred 
and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Landing of the Pilgrims on 
" Plymouth Rock." I don't see how I can possibly come ; for I 
must go to an army meeting, at Cleveland, Ohio, next week, and 
have also particularly promised to attend the New England dinner 
at Delmonico's, New York, on the 22d of December next. I have 
not yet seen the President, and don't know what answer has been 
sent ; but it seems to me he can hardly spare the time at that 
season of the year. Should he, however, agree to go to Plymouth, 
and should he request me to go along, I would construe it in the 
nature of an obligation that would release me from the prior prom- 
ise to be with the New England Society of New York. Though 
not a native of New England, I always remember that both my 
parents were born at Norwalk, Connecticut, and shall ever cherish 
their memory and virtues. This may entitle me to full fellowship 
with the New England Societies, though from association I usually 
claim affiliation with the Broad Field of the Great West, with 
which my associations have been more intimate and more closely 
identified. If in life, however, I can blend all parts of our 
Union into the hearty fellowship which a common nationality, com- 
mon history, and a common destiny have decreed, I surely will 
attempt it. 

Every thing you have written begets a desire to be present, and 
witness so interesting an occasion ; but I fear the chances are against 



APPENDIX. 173 

me. I am none the less obliged to you for the cordial manner in 
which you have invited me to accept the hospitalities of Plymouth 
during the commemoration of the Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anni- 
versary of the Landing of the Pilgrims. 

With great respect, &c., 

W. T. Sherman, Genl 



Washington, D. C, Dec. 6, 1870. 
Wm. T. Davis, Esq. 

Dear Sir, — I certainly admire your perseverance, and only 
regret that for the display of this virtue you have so indifferent a 
subject. You surely have been most kind, and are entitled to my 
heartiest thanks ; but still I remain of the opinion that it would be 
improper for me to attempt so much. Let me repeat. I must 
attend here, during tlie night of Monday the 19th, a ball given for 
the benefit of the poor, of which Mrs. Sherman is a patroness, and 
I am announced as a manager. I must leave early next morning, 
the 20th, for Philadelphia, to attend the grand opening, that eve- 
ning, of Rotlierraell's jiicture of Gettysburg, in compliment to, and 
by earnest invitation of, General Meade. If I am to accept your 
invitation, I would have to hurry away, in order to reach Plymouth 
by noon of the 21st ; then, at 5, p.ir., huri'y away to get to Boston 
in time for the train for New York, where, on the 22d, I would have 
to dine out, and go straight to the New P^ngland dinner, at Del- 
monico's, at 9, p.m. Now I leave it to you, if flesh and blood, 
weakened by fifty years' hard work, ought to be taxed in that style ; 
and would I not be likely to reach the feast of the wits of New 
York a dull guest ? 

I must again ask your kind indulgence to spare me such a race 
after pleasure ; for I know you respect me too highly to wish me 
to attempt what would be hard work, instead of a personal gratifica- 
tion to myself or to my friends. 

I hope I may live for another occasion, when it would be a real 
treat to stand among the descendants of tlie Pilgrim Fathers, upon 
the very spot whicli they hallowed by their steps. 
With great respect, 

Your friend, 

W. T. Sherman, General. 



174 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

Lowell, Nov. 18, 1870. 
My dear Mr. Davis, — Pity me ! I am obliged to attend a 
meeting of the Board of Managers of the National Asylum, on the 
19th, at Washington, which will last for three days, so that I cannot 
help to commemorate the Pilgrims ; but I will do all I can to 
induce the President to go, although, it being just before the holi- 
days, I have not much hope of my efforts. 

Yours truly, 

Benj. F. Butler. 
Mr. Wm. T. Davis, Plymouth, Mass. 



Washington, Dec. 10, 1870. 
Sir, — I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of an invita- 
tion to attend the Pilgrim Society's Celebration of the Two Hundred 
and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Landing of the Pilgrims at Ply- 
mouth, Dec. 21, 1870. It is scarcely probable that I shall be 
able to leave Washington at that time ; but should it be in my 
power to do so, I shall esteem it a great pleasure to participate in 
the celebration of the great event which it is {iroposed thus to 
honor. 

Very respectfully, 

Your obedient servant, 

N. P. Banks. 
Hon. Wm. T. Davis. 



Washington, D. C, Dec. 1, 1870. 
My dear Sir, — I have earnestly hoped that I should be able 
to accept your invitation to attend the meeting of the Pilgrim 
Society of Plymouth, on the 21st of December; but I find that 
it will not be possible for me to do so. 

The thought of meeting that Society, to aid in celebrating the 
Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Landing of the 
Pilgrims, was so agreeable to me, that it has been with difficulty 
that I am compelled to abandon it. 

Please present my regrets to the Society, and accept for them 
and for yourself my thanks for their kind invitation. 
Very truly yours, 

J. A. Garfield. 
Hon. Wm. T. Davis. 



APPENDIX. 175 



British Legation, 
Washington, Nov. 18, 1870. 
Hon. Wm. T. Davis, Ch. 

Sir Edward Thornton presents his compliments to the Committee 
of Arrangements of the Pilgrim Society, and begs to express his 
regret that he fears it will be out of his power to avail himself of 
their kind invitation for the 21st of December next ; for it is at a 
time of the year when his official duties render it very difficult for 
him to absent himself from Washington. 



State or Maine Executive Department, 
Augusta, Dec. 17, 1870. 

My dear Sir, — On receiving your letters, which had followed 
my track for some time, I wrote you a hurried letter last evening, 
saying that I thought it doubtful if I could manage to be with you 
at Plymouth. Looking at the business which now opens, and the 
imperative engagements which unfold to claim every moment of the 
closing year, I still find it doubtful, if not impossible. I have 
unavoidable engagements of a public nature on the day before 
and day after the 21st, and it would drive me fast and far to at- 
tempt to reach you and get back. I will still continue, however, to 
examine the situation, and will write again Monday morning. 
With many thanks and hearty sympathy, 

Yours, 

J. L. Chamberlain. 
Hon. Wm. T. Davis. 



State of Rhode Island Executive Department, 
Providence, Dec. 2, 1870, 

Gentlemen, — Your cordial invitation to be present at the Two 
Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Landing of the Pilgrims 
at Plymouth, Dec. 21, 1870, is at hand. I regret to say, engage- 
ments will prevent my acceptance thereof. 
Very respectfully, 

Your obedient servant, 

Seth Padelford. 
Hon. Wm. T. Davis, and others, 
Plymouth, Mass. 



176 



PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 



Office of the 
" NoETH American and United States Gazette," 
132 South Third Street, 

Philadelphia, Dec. 17, 1870. 

Mt dear Sir, — I have delayed my final answer to your 
several kind invitations, in the hopes that I might see my way clear 
to be with you on the occasion of your intended Celebration ; but 
this I now fear will be impossible. In addition to the obstacles I 
have already mentioned, there are others, with the particulars of 
which I need not trouble you, that will effectually prevent my 
leaving here in time to reach Plymouth on the 21st inst. I regret 
this most sincerely. 

If you should ever have occasion to come to Philadelphia, I trust 

you will give me the opportunity of showing you in person how 

fully I appreciate the courtesy you have shown in this matter ; and 

in the mean while, 

I am very truly yours, 

Morton McMichael. 
Wm. T. Davis, Esq. 



Philadelphia, Not. 28th, 1870. 
Wm. T. Davis, and others. 

Committee of Arrangements. 

Gentlemen, — Your invitation for Wednesday, December 21st, 
is received. I should take much pleasure in being present ; but I 
fear that my engagements will prevent my leaving home at that 
time. 

Thanking you most cordially for your kind invitation, 
I am very truly yours, 

Jay Cooke. 



St. Louis, 30 Nov., 1870. 
To the Committee of the Pilgrim Society of Plymouth, Mass. : — 

Your invitation to the President of the New England Society of 
St. Louis, to meet you on the Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary 
of the Landing of the Pilgrims, is recorded. I see you change your 
Celebration to the 21st of December. Throughout the West the 
22d of December is looked upon as the proper day, and probably 
we shall have a celebration here on the 22d of December, which 



APPENDIX. 177 

will prevent my attendance. Thanking you for the invitation, I 
would inquire the reason for changing the day, although we may 
not be able to conform to it. 

Yours, 

George Partridge, President. 



New York, Dec. 4, 1870. 
Hon. Wm. T. Davis. 

My dear Sir, — I am chagrined to be unexpectedly called upon, 
by a parochial necessity, to recall my engagement to be present at 
the Pilgrim Celebration in Plymouth, on the 21st instant. 

The marriage of one of the daughters of a very old and valued 
member of my society takes place on that day ; and, as her pastor, I 
must give up every outside gratification to meet her natural desire 
for my nuptial benediction. I assure j^ou that it is with special pain 
that I withdi'aw a promise from the fulfilment of which I had an- 
ticipated so much pleasure. Please regard me not as inconstant, 
but only as unfortunate in not being able to be in two agreeable 
places at the same time. One advantage will accrue to you : you 
will now have ten minutes to give to some other son of New Eng- 
land bursting with the desire to honor his Fathers at the expense of 
other people's patience. 

With cordial regard and best wishes for the entire prosperity 
of your Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary, I am your obliged 
and disappointed friend and servant, 

Henry W. Bellows. 



Boston, Nov. 28th, 1870. 
My dear Sir, — I am very much obliged by your second note 
of the 22d, but unfortunately I am engaged also upon the " true day." 
But you will not miss my little rill of talk in your Niagara of elo- 
quence. 

Very truly yours, 

George William Curtis. 

Hon. Wm. T. Davis. 

— • — 

52 Wall St., New York. 
Dear Sir, — I have received your invitations to myself person- 
ally and to the President of the New England Society to attend the 
great Celebration of the Landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, on the 

23 



178 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

21st of December ; and also your note of November 19 th, promising 
to get me back to New York on the 22d. I feel very grateful for 
your kindness and that of the Committee, and wish it might be pos- 
sible for me to come to Plymouth to attend the Celebration ; but our 
Society in New York, ambitious to do its part on so noted an anni- 
versary, has made preparations for an oration on the evening of the 
21st, and a dinner on the evening of the 22d ; and as Mr. Emerson 
has consented to come and deliver the oration, I feel in duty bound 
to be here and attend that. I must, therefore, with many thanks, 
decline your flattering invitation. I am happy to think, however, 
that our Society will be represented at your Celebration by some of 
its most honored members. 

Your obedient servant, 

Joseph H. Choate. 
Hon. Wm. T. Davis. 

"Will you please express to the Committee my thanks, and my 
very great regret at being compelled to decline their invitation. 



New York Tribune, 
New York, Dec. 6th, 1870. 

Dear Sir, — I am very busy, and not very well, so I do not see 
how I can go to Plymouth. 

Yours, 

Horace Greeley. 



EosLTN, Long Island, Nov. 14th, 1870. 
Dear Sir, — I beg through you to thank the Committee of Ar- 
rangements, of which you are Chairman, for the invitation with which 
they have honored me, to be present at the Two Hundred and Fiftieth 
Anniversary of the landing of my ancestors, the Pilgrims, at Ply- 
mouth. Owing to various reasons, I must forego the pleasure of 
attending. I am, sir, 

Very respectfully yours, 

W. C. Bryant. 
W. T. Davis, Esq. 



APPENDIX. 179 

Neav York, Dec. 10th, 1870. 
My dear Mr. Davis, — I have delayed answering your kind 
note of the 1st inst. until it should appear distinctly whether I 
might not be able to come on to Plymouth to your approaching Cele- 
bration, as I should be glad to do. I find, now, that it is out of the 
question for me to count upon being able to leave my professional 
engagements here for the j^roposed visit. I am sorry to lose Mr. 
Winthrop's oration, and the festivities of the occasion. I remember 
with much pleasure my former visit to Plymouth, and with my 
thanks for the remembrance of the Committee, 
I am yours very truly, 

Wji. M. Evarts. 
W. T. DAvrs, Esq. 



Yale College, New Haven, Ct., 
Nov. 23(3, 1870. 
Wm. T. Davis, Esq., and others. 

Gentlemen, — My engagements will probably be such that I 
shall be unable to spare the time to be present at the Anniversary of 
the Landing of the Pilgrims, as celebrated by the Pilgrim Society 
at Plymouth. 

Accept my thanks for your hospitable invitation, and believe me, 
gentlemen, to be, 

Yours gratefully, 

Theodore D. Woolset. 



Boston, Dec. 10th, 1870. 
Hon. Wm. T. Davis. 

Dear Sir, — I have the honor to acknowledge the courteous 
invitation of the Pilgrim Society to attend their Celebration at Ply- 
mouth, on Wednesday, the 21st inst., and to express my regret that 
I fear my engagements will not permit me to be present with them 
on so interesting an occasion. 

Very respectfully, 

E. R. Hoar. 



Boston, Dec. 19th, 1870. 
Hon. William T. Davis. 

Dear Sir, — A case of bereavement, just announced to me in a 

telegram, will prevent my attendance at the commemoration festival 

to be held at Plymouth on Wednesday next ; as, on the same day, 

in an adjacent State, and by the express desire of a highly esteemed 



180 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

friend, now happily released by death from excruciating suffering, 
and an incurable malady, I am to participate in the funeral rites 
demanded by the occasion. My absence, however, will not be 
missed in so large a company as will be gathered to pay their hom- 
age to the memory of the Pilgrim fathers and mothers of 1620 ; and 
my jiresence could add nothing to the significance of the occasion. 
The disappointment will be simply personal to myself. Nor should 
I think of stating to you the cause of my non-appearance, were it 
not for my acceptance of the invitation so kindly extended to me by 
yourself in behalf of the Committee of Arrangements. 

It was in support of civil and religious liberty that the Pilgrims of 
the " Mayflower " encountered the most formidable dangers and made 
the most heroic sacrifices ; their trust in God absolute, their rever- 
ence for his laws unbounded, their assertion of the rights of con- 
science fearless and uncompromising. However at variance with 
their spirit and object was the conduct of others who came to these 
shores afterward, and with whom they have been too often igno- 
rantly and unjustly confounded, they made good their professions by 
their lives, and continued faithful to the end. In this they deserve 
to be applauded, and, better still, to be imitated. But no commemora- 
tion of their worth is deserving of record which is not inspired by a 
noble purpose to draw from their example incentives to higher 
aspirations, and a broader recognition of human rights than has yet 
been attained even in our land. 

" We, who are the seed 
Of buried creatures, if we turned and spat 
Upon our antecedents, we were vile. 
Bring violets, rather ! If these had not walked 
Their furlong, could we hope to walk our mile ? 
Therefore, bring violets ! Yet, if we, self-balked, 
Stand still, a strewing violets all the while, 
These moved in vain of whom we've vainly talked. 
So rise up henceforth with a clieerful smile, 
And having reaped the violets, reap the corn, 
And having reaped and garnered, bring the plough, 
And draw new furrows 'neath the healthy morn, 
And plant the great Hereafter in this Now. 

Dead, ye shall no longer cling to us 
With rigid hands of dessicating praise, 
And drag us backward by the garment thus, 
To stand and laud you in long-drawn virelays ; 
We will not henceforth be oblivious 
Of our own lives because ye lived before. 



APPENDIX. 181 



Nor of our acts because ye acted well. 

We thank you that ye first unlatched the door, 

But will not make it inaccessible 

By thankings on the thresholds any more. 

We hurry onward to extinguish hell 

With our fresh souls, our younger hope, and God's 

Maturity of purpose. Soon shall we 

Die also ; and that then our periods 

Of life may round themselves to memory, 

As smoothly as on our graves the burial sods, 

We now must look to it to excel as ye. 

And bear our age as far, unlimited 

By the last mind mark ; so to be invoked 

By future generations as their dead ! " 

Animated by considerations like these, we can alone be justified 
in observing the anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrim band at 
Plymouth Rock. 

Yours for constant progress, 

Wm. Lloyd Garrison. 

P. S. — If I were present at your commemorative dinner, I could 
offer no sentiment more in accordance with my own mind, or more 
appropriate to the occasion, than is contained in the following lines 
by Lowell : — 

" New occasions teach new duties ; time makes ancient good uncouth ; 
They must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth. 
Lo ! before us gleam her camp-fires ! we ourselves must Pilgrims be, 
Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate winter sea, 
Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's blood-rusted key." 



Boston, Dec. 7, 1870. 
I have delayed replying to your kind invitation till the present 
time in the hope that I might be able to accept it. But I find that 
my official engagements are such that I am very reluctantly com- 
pelled to forego that pleasure. 

Yours very respectfully and truly. 



Hon. Wm. T. Davis. 



R. A. Chapman. 

Salem, Nov. 12, 1870. 



Hon. Wm. T. Davis, 

Chairman of Committee of Arrangements. 
Dear Sir, — I beg you to express to your Committee my 
thanks for the invitation you have conveyed to me. No occasion 



182 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

could have stronger attractions to me tlian the Celebration, on Dec. 21, 
1870, at Plymouth, of the Landing of the Pilgrims. A very severe 
illness, from which I am appearing slowly to recover, will, at the 
best, leave me in a state that will forbid me leaving home, this 
winter, for any distance. 

Please to express my regrets to your associates ; and believe me, 
as ever, 

Yours most affectionately, 

Charles W. Upham. 



Worcester, Dec. 1, 1870. 
Gentlemen, — Your kind invitation to be present at the Cele- 
bration of the Landing of the Pilgrims has remained unanswered 
until now, in the hope that I might see my way to accept the 
honor. But I regret that the necessity of my being absent from 
the State at that time will compel me to forego the pleasure I 
otherwise should have in being with you on an occasion so laden 
with tender and solemn thoughts. 

I remain, with profound respect, 

Very truly your ob't serv't, 

Alex. H. Bullock. 



Boston, Dec. 20, 1870. 
My dear Sir, — I received your invitation, and should have 
replied, but from its form supposed that a reply, unless in the 
affirmative, was not expected; and as I knew very well that I 
should be busy winding up matters preparatory to a session at the 
State House, I did not write. 

I thank you very much for your kind remembrance of me, and 
regret that I cannot be present on an occasion which I know will 
be most enjoyable to all concerned. 

Yours truly, 

H. H. Cooledge. 



Boston, Dec. 20th, 1870. 
Wm. T. Davis. 

My dear Sir, — I have to acknowledge the recei^jt of your 
recent and former note. With the pressure of professional engage- 
ments upon me, especially since my partner, Mr. Gaston, has been 
elected Mayor, and so rendered unable to attend to business, I have 



APPENDIX. 183 

doubted whether I could be at Plymouth, and at this hour I cannot 
certainly say I can get away ; but I hope to be with you, and make 
my excuses in person for my negligence. I hope I can get away. 
If not, accept my thanks for your kindness, and permit me to sub- 
scribe myself. 

Yours very truly, 

H. Jewell. 



■^ Harvard College, Cambridge, 

Mass., Dec. 8, 1870. 
Dear Sir, — I received, some time since, a kind invitation to 
attend the Pilgrim Celebration ; and now Professor Goodwin has 
given me a message on the subject. My duties and engagements 
are so pressing that I find it quite impossible to undertake other 
labors or pleasures which are not near at hand. I am sorry that I 
must lose the pleasure of participating in this festival. 
Very truly yours, 

Charles W. Eliot. 
Hon. Wm. T. Davis. 



Cambridge, Nov. 19, 1870. 
Gentlemen, — I have had the honor of receiving your invita- 
tion to be jsresent at the Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary 
of the Landing of the Pilgrims, and regret that it will not be in 
my power to accept it. Permit me to thank you for this mark of 
your regard, and believe me. 

Yours faithfully, 

Henry W. Longfellow. 
Hon. Wm. T. Davis, and others. 

Committee of Arrangements. 



Attorxet General's Office, 
Boston, Dec. 5th, 1870. 

Gentlemen, — I am sorry to find that I shall not be able to 
attend the Celebration to which you have kindly invited me. With 
thanks for your courtesy, 

I am very respectfully and truly yours, 

Charles Allen. 
Hon. Wm. T. Davis, and others, 

Committee of Arrangements. 



184 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

MiDDLEBORO', Dec. 14, 1870. 
To Wm. T. Davis, and others. Committee. 

Gentlemen, — I very much regret that I shall be unable to 
comply with your kind invitation to be with you on the 21st inst. 
I am very truly yours, 

Wm. H. Wood. 



Boston, Nov. 17, 1870. 
My dear Sir, — I thank you for your kind invitation to be at 
Plymouth on December 21st, but I am compelled to forego the 
pleasure I should take in being present, owing to a positive engage- 
ment for that evening in this city- 
Very truly yours, 

J. M. Manning. 



Weston, Dec. 19, 1870. 
Hon. Wm. T. Davis, et ah. 

Duties which I do not feel at liberty to postpone will prevent 

my being present at the Celebration, next Wednesday, as I had 

before anticipated ; though in heart and spirit I shall be with you 

in honoring the memory of the Pilgrim ancestors ; who, with such 

toil and sacrifice, "kindled the light," to use Bradford's figure, 

" which hath shone to our whole Nation, as one small candle may 

light a thousand." 

Yours sincerely, 

E. H. Sears. 



Cambridge, Dec. 18, 1870. 
Gentlemen, — I am greatly obliged by the honor of your 
invitation to the approaching Celebration of the Landing of the 
Pilgrims. 

I count on being at Plymouth on that occasion ; but, as it must 
depend on the weather and other circumstances, I respectfully 
request that I may not be considered in your arrangements. 
I have the honor to be, Gentlemen, 

Your obliged and humble servant, 

John G. Palfret. 
Hon. Wm. T. Davis, and others, 

Committee of Arrangements. 



APPENDIX. 185 

New Bedford, Dec. 10th, 1870. 

My dear Sir, — I gratefully acknowledge the courtesy of the 
Committee having in charge the Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anni- 
versary of the great Settlement of 1 620, contained in their invitation 
to participate in the duties and pleasures of this commemoration. 

I had hoped to see some way to snatch that day from business, 
and have delayed this acknowledgment for that cause. But I shall 
be obliged to spend the day in official duties in court, unless Judge 
Scudder should think that on such a day no court ought to sit in the 
Old Colony. For it would well suit the spirit of the day, if within 
the territoi'ial limits of the Plymouth Colony all business should be 
suspended on that occasion, and the time be given up to the con- 
sideration of the grandest event in history. 

Very truly yours, 

Geo. Marston. 
Hon. Wm. T. Davis, Chairman, &c. 



Salem, December 17th, 1870. 
Gentlemen, — Your communication, inviting me to be present at 
the Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Landing of the 
Pilgrims at Plymouth, has been received. I am grateful to you for 
the opportunity you have offered me to take part in the interesting 
ceremonies of the occasion ; and I regret, more than I can express, 
that an engagement to speak in New York, which cannot be post- 
poned, will prevent my enjoying the privilege you have extended to 
me. The suggestion of your chairman, Mr. Davis, that I should 
say something " in connection with the Essex settlement," has filled 
me with a sense of the obligation I am under to connect the locality 
in which I reside with a memorial service intended to perpetuate 
the memory of events in which Plymouth and Essex were mutually 
engaged in the early heroic days of our country. The story, I know, 
is familiar. Roger Conaut, standing as a sentinel of Puritanism on 
the cliffs of Cape Ann, and John Endicott, obedient to the call of 
his great predecessor on this north shore, entered upon a service here 
which gave strength and courage to the Carvers and Bradfords of 
Plymouth, who had already given to the encircling shore of Massa- 
chusetts Bay the blessed reputation of a protecting arm for high re- 
ligious purpose, a firm and abiding faith, a stern conscience, and the 
right of all men to enter God's holy church and share in the honors 
and responsibilities of a Christian State. 

24 



186 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

In this great work, it was given to Plymouth, indeed, to lead the 
way. The path which her Pilgrims trod from England to Leyden, 
fi'om Leyden to Delft-Haven and Southampton, and thence to the 
shores of America, will be traced in all coming time, with fervid 
interest, by every lover of the divine power in man. To all the 
brave and thoughtful, the names of Robinson and Bradford and 
Carver will always be dear ; and there will be none to share with 
them the immortal honor of having inspired an empire of freedom 
and faith. But we, who occupy this soil upon which John Endicott, " a 
fit instrument to begin this wilderness work," and "the excellent and 
truly Catholic " Francis Higginson, first trod, rejoice over Plymouth, 
as children in the honor and greatness of their father, and claim for 
oui'selves a share in the great inheritance. We love to remember 
the mission of the good physician of Plymouth, who, when our an- 
cestors on the Naumkeag side were broken down by disease, crossed 
the Bay and landed here on his errand of mercy. We listen to the 
religious discussion between this messenger of kindness and Gov- 
ernor Endicott, upon predestination, " fixed fate, free will, and fore- 
knowledge absolute ; " upon the j^rimitive simplicity of Christianity ; 
upon the aggressions and encroachments of Episcopacy ; and jjerhaps 
upon that great Puritan Commonwealth just rising into existence, 
and confirming by the hardships of its youth those qualities which 
have made its manhood so strong and triumphant. We I'ecall, as 
a mutual possession for Essex and Plymouth, the correspondence 
which then commenced between Governor Endicott and Governor 
Bradford, — the interchanging thought of two giant minds laden with 
solemn duties and responsibilities for their own generation and for 
all after time. And by the side of Rose Standish, the morning and 
the evening star of the Pilgrims, we place Arbella Johnson, the 
" Flower of Lincoln," the delicious ornament of our gloomy Naum- 
keag settlement, whose life was the light, and whose death was the 
shadow, which first fell upon our colony ; " and of each of whom we 
may say, — 

" The saintly faith that bore her soul 

Where clouds no more are known, ^ 

Save by the fruits their tear-drops helped 

To ripen round the throne, — 
Yes, that pixre love, that hallowed faith, 

Have reared above her clay 
Such monument and epitaph 

As may not wear away." 



APPENDIX. 187 

To us the memory of these early associations of our ancestors, 
united in a great cause, is peculiarly sacred ; and I am sure that I 
do but utter the sentiment of every descendant of the heroic settlers 
of Naumkeag, and the feelings of all our citizens, when I express 
the gratitude we feel that the " Essex settlement " may share the re- 
nown which has gathered around the stern and devoted purpose of 
the Plymouth Colony. For the courtesy extended to them and to 
myself, in the fraternal suggestions accompanying your invitation, 
allow me to express my sincere and grateful acknowledgments, and 
I doubt not theirs. 

Respectfully and truly yours, 

Geo. B. LoRiNG. 
Hon. Wm. T. Davis, Wm. H. Whitman, Esq., 

Hon. Chas. G. Davis, and others, Committee, Plymouth. 



Amesbury, 12th mo. 17th, 1870. 
Hon. W. T. Davis, and others. Committee. 

Gkntlemen, — I regret that it is impossible for me to accept 
your invitation to attend the Celebration of the Two Hundred and 
Fiftieth Anniversary of the Landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth. 
No one can appreciate more highly than myself the noble qualities 
of the men and women of the " Mayflower." It is not of them that I, 
a descendant of the sect called " Quakers," have reason to complain 
in the matter of persecution. A generation which came after them, 
with less piety and more bigotry, is especially responsible for the 
little unpleasantness referred to ; and the sufferers from it scarcely 
need any present championship. They certainly did not wait alto- 
gether for the revenges of posterity. If they lost their ears, it is 
satisfactory to remember that they made those of their mutilators 
tingle with a rhetoric more sharp than polite. 

A worthy New England deacon once described a brother in the 
church as a very good man God-ward, but rather hard man-ward. 
It cannot be denied that some very satisfactory steps have been 
taken in the latter direction, at least since the days of the Pilgrims. 
Our age is tolerant of creed and dogma, broader in its sympathies, 
more keenly sensitive to temporal need ; and, practically recogniz- 
ing the brotherhood of the race, wherever a cry of suflFering is heard 
its response is quick and generous. It has abolished slavery, and 
is lifting women from world-old degradation to equality with man 



188 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

before the law. Our criminal codes no longer embody the maxim of 
barbarism, " an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," but have 
regard not only to the safety of the community, but to the reform 
and well-being of the criminal. All the niore, however, for this 
amiable tenderness do we need the counterpoise of a strong sense of 
justice. With our sympathy for the wrong-doer, we need the old 
Puritan and Quaker hatred of wrong-doing ; with our just tolerance 
of men and opinions, a righteous abhorrence of sin. All the more 
for the sweet humanities and Christian liberalism which, in drawing 
men nearer to each other, are increasing the sum of social influences 
for good or evil, we need the bracing atmosphere, healthful if 
austere, of the old moralities. Individual and social duties are quite 
as imperative now as when they were minutely specified in statute- 
books and enforced by penalties no longer admissible. It is well 
that stocks, whipping-post, and ducking-stool are now only matters 
of tradition ; but the honest reprobation of vice and crime which 
they symbolized should by no means perish with them. The true 
life of a nation is in its personal morality, and no excellence of con- 
stitution and laws can avail much if the people lack purity and 
integrity. Culture, art, refinement, care for our own comfort and 
tliat of others, are well ; but truth, honor, reverence, and fidelity to 
duty, are indispensable. 

The Pilgrims were right in afiirming the paramount authority of 
the law of God. If they erred in seeking that authoiitative law, and 
passed over the Sermon on the Mount for the stern Hebraisms of 
Moses ; if they hesitated in view of the largeness of Christian liberty ; 
if they seemed unwilling to accept the sweetness and light of the 
Good Tidings, — let us not forget tliat it was the mistake of men who 
feared more than they dared to hope ; whose estimate of the exceed- 
ing sinfulness of sin caused them to dwell upon God's vengeance 
rather than His compassion ; and whose dread of evil was so great 
that, in shutting their hearts against it, they sometimes shut out the 
good. It is well for us if we have learned to listen to the sweet per- 
suasion of the Beatitudes, but there are crises in all lives which 
require also the emphatic " Thou shalt not " of the Decalogue whicli 
the Founders wrote on the gate-posts of their Commonwealth. 

Let us then be thankful for the assurance which the last few years 
have afforded us that 

" The Pilgrim spirit is not dead, 
But walks in noon's broad light." 



APPENDIX. 189 

We have seen it in the faith and trust which no circumstances 
could shake ; in heroic self-sacrifice, in entire consecration to duty. 
The Fathei's have lived in their sons. Have we not all known the 
Winthrops and Brewsters, the Saltonstalls and Sewalls, — of the old 
time in gubernatorial chairs, in legislative halls, — around winter 
camp-fires, in the slow martyrdoms of prison and hospital ? The 
great struggle through which we have passed has taught us how 
much we owe to the men and women of the Plymouth Colony, — the 
noblest ancestry that ever a people looked back to with love and 
reverence. Honor, then, to the Pilgrims ! Let their memory be 
green for ever ! 

Truly your friend, 

John G. Whittier. 



NOTES. 



1. — Page 7. 

Extract from the Records of the Pilgrim Society, Plymouth, Mass. 

Saturday, December 15th, 1849. 
Voted, That a Committee be appointed, consistinp; of James Savage, Charles H. 
Warren, Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, of Boston, and Timothj' Gordon and Abraham 
Jackson, of Plj-mouth, to consider the expediencj' of celebrating in future the 
Landing of the Pilgrims, on the twenty-first day of December, instead of the 
twenty-second, and that said Committee report at the next regular meeting, on 
the last Monday of May next. 

Monday, May 27th, 1850. 
At this meeting, the Committee appointed in December last, to consider the 
expediency of altering the day of celebrating the Landing of the Pilgrims, pre- 
sented a full and able Report on the subject, which, after a general discussion of 
the same, was unanimoush' accepted, and ordered to be printed. 

Voted, That this Society will hereafter regard the twenty-first day of December, as 
the true anniversary of the Landing of the Pilgrims. 

A true copy from the Records of the Pilgrim Society. 

William S. Russell, Recording Secretary. 

The Committee of the Pilgrim Society, apj^ointed, at the meet- 
ing in December last, " to consider the expediency of celebrating in 
future the Lauding of the Pilgrims, on the twenty-first day of 
December, instead of the twenty-second," having duly considered 
the subject, submit the following as their Report : — 

That the happy Monday, on which our fathers came, for the first 
time, on shore at Plymouth from the shallop, wherein they had 
" circulated the Bay " between Cape Cod and this harbor, and, hav- 
ing on Friday preceding got to anchor under the lee of Clark's 
Island, had there quietly spent the Sunday, after return of thanks 
to God on Saturday for deliverance in their great peril from break- 
ing the rudder and the mast, and losing the sail — this Monday 
when they "marched into the land, saw the corn fields, and running 
brooks, judged the place fit for habitation, and returned to the ship," 
as Bradford, who was of the exploring party, assures us, " with the 
discovery to their great comfort," is the very day that all of us 
desire to honor as the birth day of Christiau freedom and true 
civilization in New Enyjlaud. 



192 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

Reverence for progenitors, as well as self-respect, forbids us to 
permit any mixture of fiction with the great truths of their story. 
By any such artifice it can never be brightened ; as it will not be 
darkened, we are confident, either by disreputable facts or evil sur- 
mises. "When paying our ancestors the debt of gratitude, we should 
rather exclude, than encourage, such doubtful traditions, as the 
ignorant are wont to heap on important events. Who first landed 
on the rock ? was once an idle inquiry, thought to be met by the 
claims of Mary Chilton, till an equal competitor was found in John 
Alden ; — as if each pretence were not childish ; — as if we did not 
know, that Alden was not one of the twelve that first came in the 
shallop, that no woman was within many miles of this spot for 
several days, and that Mary Chilton, especially, was occupied in 
attendance on her dying father, who lived but two days after the 
little expedition left Cape Cod harbor. Every incident of the 
doing and suffering of our fathers near that time should be fresh in 
our memories, as if it had occurred last week ; and to preserve 
exactness of date, most agreeable is the coincidence of this happy 
lauding with the recurrence, almost to an hour precisely, of the 
Winter solstice. 

That memorable Monday was 21st December, according to the 
Almanacs then used by the larger part of the Christian world, to 
which the residue of us, except adherents to the Greek platform of 
the church, have since conformed ; but in the Almanac of our 
fathers, or old style, that day was the 11th December, 1620. How- 
ever there can be no doubt about an identical day, let nominal 
dates be ever so diverse, because the week days will be the same, 
whether old or new style be employed. Truth spread slowly in this 
direction. Since the church of Rome reformed the Calendar, on 
advice of the ablest mathematicians of Europe, forty years had not 
run to the coming of the Pilgrims; and the prejudice, not the wis- 
dom, of our King, Lords, and Commons, in Parliament assembled, 
continued to reject the improvement one hundred and thirty years 
longer. Yet it was not ignorance, but more blame-worthy cause, 
that made the numbering of days in the month so ditlerent, between 
England and other nations. The practise of inoculation for the 
small pox we borrowed from the Turks, many years before our 
repugnance to the Catholic church would receive from its supporters 
needful correction of an arithmetical fixlsehood in our Almanac. 

A simple illustration may be agreeable to those who have not 
either leisure to follow a brief demonstration, or memory to preserve 
naked numbers. Capt. AUerton, when he went home to England 



NOTES, 193 

in the Autumn of 1626, we may suppose, crossed the channel in 
December, to meet the Huguenot brethren in France. This was 
the first year since his landing at Plymouth, in which the days of 
the month and days of the week coincided with those of 1620; 
and on Saturday, 9th, by his English reckoning, he must have 
remembered the anchorage under Clark's Island ; — the sacred rest 
of Sunday, the 10th ; — and the glad bounding upon land of Mon- 
day, the 11th. Did he not require his brethren in the faith to 
rejoice with him on the anniversary of religious freedom, established 
at Plymouth, for the first time beneath the sun, six years before ? 
Did he ask them to mark the day in their Almanacs for observation 
in years to come ? Did they not forthwith agree, that this day, the 
21st, in theirs, but 11th in Allerton's count, must forever be hon- 
ored ? Their Calendar being already reformed, the third Monday 
of December, 1620, or 1626, being the 21st day of the month, that 
number in the line of this month would indicate the exact day in 
succeeding years of the same or any following century, 1720, '1820, 
or 1920 ; while the unreformed style, counting, as the Huguenots did 
not, 1700 for a leap year, and so twenty-nine days in February, the 
just equivalent of 11th December, 1699, by wliich it should be 
shown, that a year was gone, must of course be the 10th instead of 
11th. The very year's day is the one we would reverence. It is 
not the gathering crowds of 22d of December, 1769, the earliest 
public observance, that we would exemplify ; but only show our 
admiration for the landing upon Plymouth rock of the blessed few, 
at tlie Winter solstice of 1620, on the day which in the reformed 
Almanac at that time, and since September, 1752, in those of Eng- 
land and of us, who claim all the rights and more than the benefits 
of Englishmen, has been, and for many thousand years to come will 
be, truly noted as the twenty-first day of December. 

The necessity of adding ten, eleven, or twelve, or more days to 
the number of the day of the month, in old style, depends not on 
the time when we inquire about the event to which this addition 
shall be applied, but to the century when that event occurred. In 
the sixth century the running of erroneous computation had made 
only one day's deviation ; but this uniform mistake in reckoning of a 
few minutes and seconds in the length of a year had swelled, in the 
seventeenth century, when Plymouth was settled by our fathers, to 
ten days. Had this been a century later, the 11th of December, 
1720, it would require eleven days for making our old style, then 
the legal one, concur with the reformed style, because 1700 was 
counted a leap year by us, but not by the most of the Christians 
who had before got upon the right track. In this nineteenth .cen- 

25 



194 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

tury twelve days must be added, yet, of course, only to occurrences 
of this century. By the Calendar of the Greek church, the day of 
the battle of Waterloo is marked on 6th of June, which in 1815 
was a Sunday ; and that Sunday of slaughter is, in all the West of 
Europe, noted as the 1 8th of that month. 

In the first half of the last century, before the change of suppu- 
tation was made by law, memorable events, as the birth of Franklin, 
of Washington, of King George III., of the capture of Louisburg, 
may have been observed by parties more or less numerous ; but this 
observation, we may, on a moment's reflection, be sure, was in each 
case held, or should have been, on a day nominally eleven days 
later, after the 2d of September, 1752, — because between the 
second and fourteenth of that month there was no day in the 
Almanac. The month had but nineteen days. A date of 3d, 
or 4th, or 5th of September, 1751, at the end of one year from it, 
was to be found only as fourteenth, fifteenth, or sixteenth, severally. 
Statute provision was simple enough, relative to rents, interest and 
such things ; but common sense was left to regulate less important 
matters. The last day of old style, under our law, being Wednes- 
day, 2d of September, the next day would be Thursday, whether 
the law was obeyed, requiring it to be called 14th — or perverse 
fanaticism called it the 3d. We know, that a person born on the 
14th of September, 1752, will be ninety-eight years old on 14th 
of September next. Why then shall one born one day earlier be 
called ninety-eight, (because his birth-day was Wednesday 2d Sep- 
tember, 1752,) eleven days before the just fulfilment of his last 
year ? Between one year and its successor, settlement of this differ- 
ence is easy enough to the humblest capacity. The matter is deter- 
mined by the exact, natural day, week, or year. Our common year 
consists of fifty-two weeks and one day ; a leap year, of fifty-two 
weeks and two days. A child born on Monday, 31st August, 1752, 
could not be a year old on 31st August, 1753, because he had lived 
only fifty weeks and four days ; for another, horn the next Monday, 
18th September was his birthday, inasmuch as there was no 7th in 
that month, eleven days being suppressed, or cancelled. On 13ih 
September, 1753, the child must be reckoned only one year old, if 
born on 2d September of the former year; but one born 2d SejJ- 
tember, 1652, would fill his one hundred and one years on 12th 
September, 1753, because (since the century when he was born was 
only ten, not eleven, days behind true reckoning) he was really one 
hundred years old on 1st September, 1752. He did not wait for 
the eighteenth century to demand eleven days, for ten was enough, 
of addition to his date ; but paid the difference of fare, one day, so 



NOTES. 195 

to speak, in passing through the gate of 1700, which was reckoned 
a leap year in old style, but not in the new, and better, computation 
of these venerable divisions of time. 

But, though the quantity of correction must vary with the length 
of time in which the error has been growing, when the correction is 
once applied, it is done forever. Had our style been changed in 
the eighth century, three days would have been sufficient to add ■, 
while eleven were found necessary by our law-makers in the last; 
and in the present, our Russian correspondents are twelve days 
behind us. We make no more addition since September, 1752 ; 
nor did the continental arithmeticians to their less contribution, hav- 
ing earlier adjusted their reckoning. Yet it is sometimes heedlessly 
spoken of as proper to add twelve days, which is indeed renewing 
the mistake, and consecrating the ignorance by which the chronology 
was corrupted before. 

In the celebration eighty years ago, this error of one day is easily 
accounted for. We may well presume, that one or more of our 
genial Old Colony club, who honored forefathers' day with public 
celebration, for the first time, in 1769, had served in the memorable 
expedition of 1745, against Cape Breton, and had for several 
previous years glorified, in succession, tlie 16th of June, as the day 
of surrender of Louisburg. To that numeral in the Almanac they 
adhered, of course, for seven years ; but they had for the next 
seventeen years been compelled to denote the exact day of any in- 
teresting occurrence in that century by addition of eleven days to 
its prior standing, and of course reached the 27th of June as their 
true anniversary. Such enumeration was inadvertently applied, 
instead of the scrupulously exact one, to the blessed day of the 
landing, though that event was one hundred and forty-nine years 
before the celebration, and so much nearer to the starting place of 
the perversity. 

Of these glorious mile-stones of memory the consecrations have, 
in our day, been numerous ; yet the false assumption of a day for 
that ceremony has been too frequent. In honor of the landing of 
Endicot, at Salem, on 6th September, 1628, the Essex Historical 
Society took in 1825 the same nominal 6th as the equivalent, — an 
error to be explained, if not justified, by fondness felt for the mere 
number, yet which would have been avoided, if any had inquired 
what day was observed in 1752, when the Statute of 24 George II., 
1751, said, there should be no 6th. For the solemn pomp of the 
observation of the two hundredth anniversary of the same happy 
occurrence, three years later, a wrong day was again assumed. 
Instead of 16th, as it ought to have been, unhappily they took- the 



196 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

18th, which appears, in one sense, a worse error than the former, 
inasmuch as it must be more blamable to outrun the truth than to 
fall behind it. Confident we may be, at least, that when September, 
1928 comes, the citizens of Salem will not feel bound to celebrate 
the 19th day of the month. Of this mistake the cause may, then, 
be recollected. Being asked, a few days before the festival, what is 
the difference between old and new style, the greatest mathematician 
of our country gave answer, according to the truth, in the open 
street, without more conference, in his prompt manner, twelve days; 
— yet Dr. Bowditch afterwards said, when it was too late, the 
question should have been, — what was the difference two hundred 
years ago ? 

At the celebration in Cliarlestown, of the landing of Gov. Win- 
throp, in 1630, 17th June, part of the Salem error was followed, 
and the 28th of June, 1830, stood for its representative. By this 
repetition of mistake, within so brief space, attention to the subject 
was attracted; and when the two hundred years from the naming 
of Boston were elapsed, the late Judge Davis, and others, took much 
interest in showing that the 7th of September, 1630, found its true 
equivalent in the day, 17th September, 1830, selected for its solemn 
commemoration. If we feel, that we have gone long enough in the 
wrong path, we may see by this illustration, that it is not too late to 
get upon the right. Another occasion for scrutiny into exact concur- 
rence of days, after so many revolutions in the sky, is recollected 
but a short time since. When the Massachusetts Historical Society 
resolved to honor the second centennial of the confederation of the 
four New England Colonies, and appointed the late John Quincy 
Adams to deliver an Address upon the importance of that act of 
19th of May, 1643, his first thought, perhaps from association with 
long residence in Russia, was of the necessity for twelve days 
required by transference of that date into our computation. But 
by looking forward on the line of procession of the Greek church, 
in which the error increases by regular lapse of time, he soon per- 
ceived that the same cause of departure from the truth having been 
at work since the vernal equinox of A. D. 32.5, shortly before the 
Council of Nice met, and having worked equally, would show 
different lengths of deviation in different times ; and felt that the 
path behind could be made straight by the same rule which alone 
must bring to our standard the vexatious chronology of the Eastern 
patriarch. In that foreign land every letter-writer, as he uses the 
Old style, prays for its correction, not so much because our 13th of 
April is their All-fool's day at St. Petersburg, as because the per- 
petuity of their reckoning in every four hundred years three days 



NOTES. 197 

short will, in the year of grace 12000, carry the seasons one 
quarter round, and so the spring will be well advanced on 21st of 
December. Let the perversity be continued, another equal term, 
and the Almanac of the Czar shall dignify as the Winter solstice, 
the same day that his neighbors of Sweden and Denmark celebrate 
as having the longest sunlight of the year. 

In the present question, it may seem, that no important conse- 
quences will come of our following the right counting, when we 
have so long been accustomed to a different one ; yet surely we 
ought not to be censured for feeling too proud to go wrong, when 
we know the path is wrong. As the exact equivalent of that 11th 
of December, 1620, in our English Almanac, was the 21st of De- 
cember in that of France, and we have since admitted our error, 
and the correctness of the other reckoning, by solemn act of legisla- 
tion, why should we celebrate a day later for that of our fathers' 
landing ? The truth should he good enough for us ; and that is the 
only reason for preference of one to another. Wlien by habit the 
right day has become the day of reverence, it will be wondered, 
why the wrong was so often observed. Next year, indeed, the true 
anniversary falling on Sunday, it may be more conformable to New 
England principles, to celebrate the following, or 22d day of the 
month ; but we presume nobody would desire a further carrying 
forward of the festival to the 23d, though our elder brothers of the 
Old Colony club, before the Revolution, once did to the 24th. 

Your Committee conclude their Report, which may, indeed, seem 
tiresome from its re[)etition of the matter with so slight variations 
as this popular form made unavoidable, by recommendation to the 
Society of the following Order : — 

That the celebration in future of the Landing of the Pilgrims at 
Plymouth be held on the twenty-first day of December ; but when 
that day falls on Sunday, then to be held on the twenty-second. 
Respectfully submitted. 

Jas. Savage, 
C. H. Warren, 
Nathl. B. Shurtleff, 
Abraham Jackson, 
Timothy Gordon. 



2. — Page 7. 

Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, born in Boston, is son of Thomas 
Lindall Winthrop, Lieutenant-Governor of Massachusetts from 
1826 to 1832, who was the son of John Still Winthrop, of New 



198 riLGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

London, who was son of John, a member of the Council of Con- 
necticut, and of the Royal Society, who was son of Wait Still 
Winthrop, Chief Justice of the Superior Court of Massachusetts, 
who was son of John, Governor of Connecticut, who was son of John, 
Governor of Massachusetts, who was son of Adam, of London, 
afterwards Lord of the Manor at Groton, in Suffolk County, Eng- 
land, and died 1623, who was son of Adam, of Groton, also Lord 
of the Manor, died 1562, who was son of Adam, who lived in 1498 
at Lavenham. The second and third Adam, the father and grand- 
father of Governor Winthrop, were buried in the family tomb now 
bearing the family name and arms, in the church-yard of Groton 
Church, in England. The town of Groton in Connecticut received 
its name from the Wiuthrops, in honor of their old family residence. 
The name of Still, found in the Winthrop family, is derived from 
the first wife of Adam, the father of John, of Massachusetts, who 
was Alice Still, sister of Dr. John Still, Master of Trinity and 
Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, and Bishop of 
Bath and Wells. Governor John Winthrop, of Massachusetts, was 
born at Edwardston, near the family seat at Groton, Jan. 12, 1587 
(old style), arrived at Salem, June 12, 1630, and died in Boston, 
March 26, 1649. 



3. — Page 8. 

Under the direction of the Finance Committee, a guarantee fund 
was raised by subscription, amounting to sixteen hundred dollars, 
to defray such expenses of the Celebration as the receipts from the 
sale of dinner and ball tickets misht fail to meet. 



4. _ Page 17. 

The ode of Hon. John Davis is here printed as revised and 
corrected by its author about fifty years after it was written. What 
is now the third verse was not included in the original ; what is 
now the sixth verse was originally the fifth, and written as 

follows : — 

Columbia, child of Heaven ! 

The best of blessings given _^ 

Rest on thy head ; 
Beneath thy peaceful skies. 
While prosperous tides arise, 
Here turn thy grateful eyes, 
Revere the dead. 

In the original, the first verse was repeated at the end. 



NOTES. 



199 



5. — Page 23. 



MUSIC 



Composed by C. A. White, for the Hymn written by Wm. T. Davis. 



Andante. 



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200 



PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 



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set on ev'iy hand; To thee, O God! we lift our eves; To thee our p-ateful voices 
thy constant care. Our Fathers' God ! in thee we'll trust; Sheltered by thee from eveir 

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raise, And kneeling at thy gracious throne, De-vout-ly join in hvmns of praise, 
harm, We 11 fol-low where thy hand shall guide, And lean on thy sustaining arm. 



raise, And kneeling at thy gracious throne, De-vout ly join in hymns of praise 
harm, We 11 fol-low where thy hand shall guide, And lean on thy sustaining arm. 

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202 



PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 



6. — Page 115. 

BILL OF FARE. 

— ♦ — 



Soup. 



28otlct). 



Chicken (with Pork) . 
Cold Pressed Corned Beef. 



lEntrtcs. 



Escalloped Oysters. 



Succotash. 



Mutton (Caper Sauce). 
Cold Beef Tonjrue. 



Chicken Salad. 



3^tUsJ)es. 



Worcestershire Sauce. 
Leicestershire Sauce. 
India Soy. 

London Club Sauce. 



Walnut Ketchup. 

Mushroom Ketchup. 
Cauliflower. 

Mixed Pickles. 



3^oast. 

Lamb. Sirloin Beef. Turkey. Goose. 

Chicken. Sugar-cured Ham. Mutton. 



Ucgctablcs. 
Potatoes. Beets. Squash. 

Turnips. Cranberries. Onic 



Celery. 



^^astrg. 
Plum Pudding, (Wine Sauce). Apple Pie. 

Plain, Frosted, and Fruit Cake. Washington Pie. 

Maccaroni and Cocoa Cakes. Squash Pie. 

Chess Cake. Pumpkin Pie. 

Mtsstxt. 

Vanilla Ice Cream. Strawberry Ice Cream. 

Apples. Raisins. Assorted Nuts. 

Assorted Confectionery. 

Coffee. Tea. 



7. — Page 115. 

"In 1623 the Colony of Plymouth was reduced at one time to 
one pint of corn, which, when divided, gave five grains to each 
person." 



NOTES. 203 

8. — Page 117. 

It is well known that not one of the Pilgrims returned in the 
" May-Flower." In connection with this vessel, it is proper here to 
say that there is not a particle of evidence to authorize or justify the 
loose statement, sometimes made, that she was engaged in the slave 
trade after her return to England. All that is known of this famous 
vessel is, that, at different times, she hailed from London, Yar- 
mouth, and Southampton, and not only brought the Pilgrims to 
Plymouth, but was one of the four vessels which transported Mr. 
HiGGiNSON and his company to Salem in 1G29, and one of the 
fleet which conveyed to New England, in 1630, John Winthrop 
and the early settlers of the Massachusetts Colony. 



9. — Page 125. 

October 25, 1632, Governor Winthrop, with Mr. Wilson, 
pastor of Boston, was carried by Mr. Pierce, of the ship " Lyon," 
in his shallop, to Weymouth, which, under the aboriginal name of 
Wessaguscus, Wessaguscussett, Wessagussett, Wichaguscussett, or 
Wessagusquassett, had been settled in 1622, by a small colony 
under Thomas Weston, which was broken up the following year. 
The next morning the party journeyed on foot, pursuing the Indian 
trail, over very much the route of the present Plymouth and Bos- 
ton road. They passed what was then and is now called Hewes' 
Cross, at Curtis' Mill, on the third herring brook on the boundaiy 
line between South Scituate and Hanover, named after John 
Heaves, one of the earliest settlers of Scituate, and crossed the 
Indian Head branch of North River at a ford about a mile above 
the bridge on the Boston road, which Winthrop called Luddam's 
Ford, after his guide, who carried him on his back across the 
river. This place is now known by the name of Ludden's Ford ; 
and Deane, in his History of Scituate, says he has no doubt that the 
guide was James Ludden, one of the early settlers of AVeyniouth. 
Their route from the North River was through Pembroke and 
Kingston. See Savage's Winthrop, vol. i. p. 91 — Barry — First 
Period — p. 198 ; and Deane's Scituate, pages 160 and 162. 



10. — Page 127. 

John Endicott was born in Dorchester, England, in the year 
1588. He sailed from Weymouth in the ship "Abigail," June 20, 



204 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 

1628, and arrived at Naumkeag, the place of destination, on the 
6th of September following. He died in Boston, March 15, 1665. 
Francis Higginson had been a non-conformist clergyman of the 
Church of England. Of Jesus College and St. John's, Cambridge, 
and subsequently rector of a church at Leicester, he had been 
deprived of his benefice for non-conformity. He arrived at Naum- 
keag June 30, 1629, was chosen teacher soon after his arrival, and 

died in 1630. 

— • — 

11. — Page 127. 

April 12, 1632, Governor Winthrop received letters from Ply- 
mouth, stating that Capt. Standish, having a fight with the Indians 
at Sowamsett, needed powder, an article of which Plymouth Colony 
was then destitute. The Governor sent the messenger back with 
as much as he could carry, — to wit, twenty-seven pounds. In 
August following, Thomas Dudley, Deputy-Governor of Massa- 
chusetts, made public charges against Governor Winthrop, the 
second of which was that he had lent powder to Plymouth Colony 
without authority. To this charge the Governor answered, " It 
was of his own powder, and upon their urgent distress, their own 
powder proving naught, when they were to send to the rescue of 
their men at Sowamsett." 



12. — Page 130. 

The Compact signed in the cabin of the May-Floiver in Cape Cod Harbor. 

In the name of God, Amen. We whose names are underwritten, 
the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign lord. King James, by the 
grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland King, defender 
of the faith, etc., having undertaken, for the glory of God, and 
advancement of the Christian faith, and honor of our King and 
country, a voyage to plant the first colony on the northern parts of 
Virginia, do, by these presents, solemnly and mutually in the pres- 
ence of God and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves 
together into a civil body politic, for our better ordering and pres- 
ervation, and furtherance of the ends aforesaid ; and by virtue 
hereof do enact constitute and frame such just and equal laws, 
ordinances, acts, constitutions, and ollices, from time to time, as 
shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of 
the Colony ; unto which we promise all due submission and 
obedience. In witness whereof we have hereunder subscribed our 



NOTES. 



205 



names, at Cape Cod, the 11th of November in the year of our 
sovereign lord. King James, of England, France and Ireland the 
eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth, anno Domini 1 620. 



Mr. John Carver . . 

William Bradford . . 

Mr. Edward Winslow 
,, William Brewster 
,, Isaac Allerton 

Capt. Miles Standish 

John Howland 

Mr. Stephen Hopkins 

Edward Tilly . 

John Tilly . . 

Francis Cook . 

Thomas Rogers 

Thomas Tinker 

John Ridgdale . 

Edward Fuller 

John Turner 

Francis Eaton . 

James Chilton . 

John Crackston 

John Billington 

Moses Fletcher 



John Alden 

Mr. Samuel Fuller 

,, Christopher Martin 

,, William Mullins . 

„ William White . 

,, Richard Warren 
John Goodman 
Degory Priest . 
Thomas Williams 
Gilbert Winslow 
Edmund Margeson 
Peter Brown . 
Richard Britterige 
George Soule . 
Richard Clarke 
Richard Gardener 
John Allerton . 
Thomas English 
Edward Dotey . 
Edward Leister 



This list of names, vpith their titles, is taken from Governor 
Bradford's manuscript. This accounts, probably, for the omission 
of the title of "Mr." to his name. The figures opposite each name 
designate the number in each family ; and the four persons whose 
names have no numbers against them are included in the families 
of some of the others. 



13. — Page 141. 

The words, " treasures hid in the sand," quoted from the 19th 
verse of chapter xxxiii. of Deuteronomy, and often used in allusion 
to the Pilgrims, sometimes has reference to the abundance of shell- 
fish with which they were supplied, and sometimes to the corn 
which the Indians had buried in the sand, some of which was dis- 
covered by the exploring party sent out from Provincetown on 
Wednesday, the 15th of November, 1620, "under the conduct of 
Capt. Miles Standish, unto whom was adjoined, for counsel and 
advice, William Bradford, Stephen Hopkins, and Edward 

TiLLEY." 



206 pilgrim anniversary. 

14. — Page 142. 

General John Winslow was the great-grandson of Governor 
Edward Winslow. He was, in 1740, a captain in the expedition 
to Cuba, and was engaged in the enterprises against Crown Point 
and Nova Scotia, and to the Kennebec, in the two French wars. 
His agency in the removal of the Acadians from Nova Scotia, 
in 1755, is well known, at which time he was a half-pay captain in 
the British army and a major-general in the militia. In this affair, 
Winslow acted under written instructions from Lieutenant-Gov- 
ei'nor Charles Lawrence, of Nova Scotia, and cannot fairly be 
charged with inhumanity. In 1756 he commanded eight thousand 
New England men against Montcalm, and in 1762 was appointed 
commissioner with William Brattle and James Otis to deter- 
mine the easterly boundary line. He died at Ilingham, in 1774, 
aged seventy-one. See Sabine's Loyalists of the Revolution, 
vol. ii. p. 439. 



15. — Page 158. 

Plymouth is generally supposed to have been named by the 
Pilgrims after Plymouth in England, which was the last place from 
which the " May-Flower " sailed. It is stated by Palfrey, in his His- 
tory of New England, vol. i. p. 94, that John Smith, on his return 
to England from his expedition, in 1614, sent a copy of a map of the 
New England Coast, from near the mouth of the Penobscot to Cape 
Cod, to Prince Charles, afterwards Charles the First, who, at his 
solicitation, gave names, principally of English towns, to some 
thirty points upon the coast. The names of Plymouth, Cape Ann, 
and Charles River, have permanently adhered to the places they 
were selected by the Prince to designate. 



16. — Page 162. 

Edward Winslow, Jr., nephew of General John Winslow, 
graduated at Harvard University in 1765. In 1774 he was one of 
the two clerks of the Court of General Sessions of the Peace and~^ 
Court of Common Pleas for Plymouth County. In 1775 he joined 
the Royal Army at Boston, and became a colonel. In 1778 he was 
proscribed and banished, and in 1782 was Muster-Master-General 
of the Loyalist forces. After the war, he settled in New Brunswick, 



NOTES. 207 

and was a member of the first Council in that Colony, Surrogate- 
General, Judge of the Supreme Court, and finally Administrator of 
the Government. He died at Frederickton, in 1815, aged seventy 
years. He resided in the house in North Street, in Plymouth, 
called the Winslow House, with his father Edward Winslow, who 
built it. Edward Winslow, the father, graduated at Cambridge in 
1736, was one of the clerks of the Court, Register of Probate, and 
Collector of the Port of Plymouth. He left the country with his 
family in 1776, and went to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he died 
in 1784, aged seventy-two years. See Sabine's Loyalists of the 
Revolution, vol. ii. p. 445. 



17. — Page 18G. 

The name of Lady Arbella Johnson has been incorrectly 
spelled by even such writers as Neal, Hutchinson, and Trumbull, 
by whom it was called Arabella. She was the daughter of Thomas, 
third Earl of Lincoln, who was descended from a family that came 
into England with William the Conqueror. Her brother, Theophi- 
lus, became the fourth Earl on the death of his father, January 15, 
1619. She married Isaac Johnson, and came to Salem with her 
husband, in company with Governor Winthrop, in the " Eagle," of 
three hundred and fifty tons, carrying twenty-eight guns and fifty 
men, whose name had been changed to " Arbella," in compliment 
to her. She arrived on the 12th of June, and coming, as Hubbard 
says, " from a paradise of plenty and pleasure, which she enjoyed 
in the family of a noble earldom, into a wilderness of wants," sur- 
vived her arrival only a month. Her husband, Isaac Johnson, was 
the richest man of the colony. According to Sewall, he died Sept. 
30, 1630, in Boston, and, at his own request, was buried in what is 
now King's Chapel burial-ground. The people manifested their 
respect for his memory by ordering their bodies to be buried near 
him ; and in this way the spot became a burial-ground, and has so 
continued to this day. Other writers claim that he died in Charles- 
town, and doubt the authenticity of the tradition relating to his burial. 
See Eliot's Biographical Dictionary, p. 281 ; and Young's Chronicles 
of Massachusetts, p. 218. 



208 PILGRIM ANNIVERSARY. 



HYMN. 

Written by Capt. Nathaniel Spooner, of Plymouth. 

Great God of all ! in humble, grateful prayer 
We come before Thee now on bended knee, 

And thank Thee that Thou didst our Fathers spare 
From the wild dangers of a wintry sea. 

We thank Thee that, when dangers greater far 

Encompassed them, that brave hearts might appall, 

Thou didst support them, and didst let the Star 
Of Hope shine on their hearts and strengthen all. 

And we, their children, on this joyous day, 
No longer peril-driven or tempest-tossed, 

Approach Thy throne in thankfulness, and pray 
Our Fathers' bright examples be not lost. 

May we, like them, have strength and courage given ; 

Bear bravely up, e'en though we feel the rod ; 
Know that a life well spent leads on to heaven. 

And duties' paths are but the paths to God. 



Cambridge: Press of John Wilson and Son. 



E 907 







